Mr. Morpeth simply stared.
“Perhaps,” suggested Miss Flossy, “I’m not good-looking enough?”
“You are good-looking enough,” replied Mr. Morpeth, recovering himself, “for anything—” and he threw a convincing emphasis into the last word as he took what was probably his first real inspection of his adored one’s junior—“but—aren’t you a trifle—young?”
“How old do you suppose I am?”
“I know. Your sister told me. You are sixteen.”
“Sixteen!” repeated Miss Flossy, with an infinite and uncontrollable scorn, “yes, and I’m the kind of sixteen that stays sixteen till your elder sister’s married. I was eighteen years old on the third of last December—unless they began to double on me before I was old enough to know the difference—it would be just like Mama to play it on me in some such way,” she concluded, reflectively.
“Eighteen years old!” said the young man. “The deuce!” Do not think that he was an ill-bred young man. He was merely astonished, and he had much more astonishment ahead of him. He mused for a moment.
“Well,” he said, “what’s your plan of campaign? I am to—to discover you.”
“Yes,” said Miss Flossy, calmly, “and to flirt with me like fun.”
“And may I ask what attitude you are to take when you are—discovered?”