“I should think you might!”
“I like her all round—with all her peculiarities.”
“What do you mean by her peculiarities?”
“Well, she has some peculiar ideas,” said Jackson Lemon in a tone of the sweetest reasonableness, “and she has a peculiar way of speaking.”
“Ah, you can’t expect us to speak so well as you!” cried Lady Beauchemin.
“I don’t see why not.” He was perfectly candid. “You do some things much better.”
“We’ve our own ways at any rate, and we think them the best in the world—as they mostly are!” laughed Lady Beauchemin. “One of them’s not to let a gentleman devote himself to a girl for so long a time without some sense of responsibility. If you don’t wish to marry my sister you ought to go away.”
“I ought never to have come,” said Jackson Lemon.
“I can scarcely agree to that,” her ladyship good-naturedly replied, “as in that case I should have lost the pleasure of knowing you.”
“It would have spared you this duty, which you dislike very much.”