“Hum! No, my dear boy. There, Phil, you see I am like a mother to you. You think you love the little thing desperately.”
“And I do so. It is no thinking. I never saw a woman who moved me as she does with her sweet, innocent ways.”
“Is it so bad as that?” said Mrs Otway, smiling.
“Bad! no, it’s good. I’m glad I’ve seen the woman at last of whom I can feel proud. She is so different from any girl I ever met before.”
“Don’t singe your wings, my handsome butterfly,” said Mrs Otway, laughing. “Why, my dear Phil, I don’t think the girl cares for you a bit.”
“But I am sure she does.”
“Has she owned to it?”
“No,” he said proudly. “I am in earnest now, and I reverence her so that I would not say a word until I have spoken to her mother and her friends.”
“Humph! yes: her friends,” said Mrs Otway. “What relatives are Sir Gordon Bourne and the Reverend Christie Bayle to the fair queen of my gallant soldier’s heart?”
“I don’t know,” he said impatiently.