She shook her head. “No, not when you saw what scrapes I fell into. You would be quite shocked, I dare say. I am myself.”
“You wrong me: I have never been shocked in my life.”
“Not even by a lady’s going to the Peerless Pool?” asked Hero, regarding him as though he had been a rare specimen.
“Certainly not! What is the Peerless Pool?”
“Well, I never went there, for it — it was not liked. But I did go to Bartholomew Fair, and the Royal Saloon, and to tell you the truth, I was excessively amused. But it was very bad ton, you know, and I should not have done it.”
He threw back his head and laughed. “I perceive, Miss Wantage, that you are what is commonly known as a handful! Let me be very impertinent, and beseech you earnestly, when you come to marry, to choose a man, like myself, who cannot be shocked!”
She coloured and looked down at her fan. “Yes, well — well, I shall not come to marry.”
“Why, how is this?” he rallied her. “I prophesy that the day is not far distant when you will be surrounded by your bridesmaids, and going to Church in a cloud of lace veil and orange blossom, with all your rejected admirers gnashing their teeth in the background, and every female relative you possess weeping in the way females relatives have, and — ”
“Oh no, indeed, you are wrong!” she interrupted. “Good gracious, how extremely I should dislike it, to be sure!”
He raised his eyebrows in mock astonishment. “Dislike a wedding? No, no, you cannot be as different from the rest of your sex as that!”