Emmeline pulled back. 'Go away, you naughty boy!' she laughed, blushing becomingly. 'Not in public, anyhow.'
'Yer knows I loves yer, Hemmeline, don't yer?' Pincher asked.
'M'yes,' she answered softly. 'If you didn't I don't suppose you'd carry on the way you do. But plenty of boys have said the same thing before, so you're not the only one—no, not by a long chalk.'
'D' you love me, Hemmeline?' Pincher wanted to know.
'Ah,' she said archly, 'now you're asking.'
'Come on, tell us if yer do.'
'Well,' she answered coyly, looking up at him through her long eyelashes, 'just a little, perhaps, when you're a good boy. That's why I want to tell you how to talk properly,' she went on to explain. 'I want you to get on—see?'
'Oh!' said Pincher, slightly mollified, but not knowing in the least how a correct pronunciation would make him rise in his profession, 'that's the lay, is it?'
Emmeline nodded.