“Oh! pooh, pooh!” ejaculated the doctor. “Arthur can take care of himself.”
“And here have I accepted an invitation for all of us to go there the week after next to dinner! I won’t go. I certainly will not go.”
“Nonsense, my dear Mary—nonsense!” said the doctor, with his eyes twinkling. “We must go. Perowne would be horribly put out if we did not.”
“Now look here, Henry, when I was a maiden lady I never even kept a cat or a dog, because I said to myself that live animals about a house might be unpleasant to one’s friends. So how do you suppose that when I have become a married lady I am going to sanction the presence of dangerous monsters in a house?”
“Oh, but it won’t hurt you,” said the doctor. “I tell you it’s a man-eater. We must go, Mary.”
“I certainly must beg of you not to ask me,” said the little lady. “My dear Harry, it gives me great pain to go against your wishes, but I could not—I really could not go.”
“Not if I assured you it was perfectly safe?”
“If you gave me that assurance, Henry, I—I think I would go; for I believe you would not deceive me.”
“Never,” said the doctor, emphatically. “Well, I assure you that you need not be under the slightest apprehension.”
“But is it chained up, Harry?”