“To be sure you do. I get as bilious and acid, and put out with my ill-luck as can be, and then I come and take a dose of you, and it seems to put me right again.”
“You’re—you’re the most insolent, cool, impertinent puppy I ever met?” cried the old man; “and—and I wish you all the ill-luck you can get.”
“Thanky,” said Geoffrey. “Well, good-by for the present. I’m going to take a walk down to the Cove.”
“Of course,” snarled Uncle Paul. “Hi! here. Madge! Madge!”
“Yes, uncle,” she cried, running eagerly out of the porch, and across the grass-plot.
“Yes, uncle,” he snarled. “You jade. You were listening, and waiting for a chance for another look, or a word, with this puppy here.”
“Oh, uncle!” cried the girl, colouring up, for the old man had guessed the truth.
“Pray don’t protest, my dear Miss Mullion,” said Geoffrey, coolly. “Say you were. There’s no harm in it.”
“Harm in it?” cried the old man, fiercely, “harm? Why, you don’t suppose I’m going to let you, a mining adventurer, flirt and play tricks with my brother’s child, and then go off and never come back?”
“Youth is the time for folly, Mr Paul.”