“Not a word; you know I like princesses. But you have.”
“Well, my girl, I’ll not speak it to you,” the young man rejoined. “There’s something to be said against everything, if you’ll give yourself trouble enough.”
“I should be very sorry if ever anything was said against you.”
“The man’s a sneak who is only and always praised,” Muniment remarked. “If you didn’t hope to be finely abused, where would be the encouragement?”
“Ay, but not with reason,” said Rosy, who always brightened to an argument.
“The better the reason, the greater the incentive to expose one’s self. However, you won’t hear it, if people do heave bricks at me.”
“I won’t hear it? Pray, don’t I hear everything? I should like any one to keep anything from me!” And Miss Muniment gave a toss of her recumbent head.
“There’s a good deal I keep from you, my dear,” said Paul, rather dryly.
“You mean there are things I don’t want, I don’t take any trouble, to know. Indeed and indeed there are: things that I wouldn’t know for the world—that no amount of persuasion would induce me, not if you was to go down on your knees. But if I did—if I did, I promise you that just as I lie here I should have them all in my pocket. Now there are others,” the young woman went on—“there are others that you will just be so good as to tell me. When the Princess asked you to come and see her you refused, and you wanted to know what good it would do. I hoped you would go, then; I should have liked you to go, because I wanted to know how she lived, and whether she had things handsome, or only in the poor way she said. But I didn’t push you, because I couldn’t have told you what good it would do you: that was only the good it would have done me. At present I have heard everything from Lady Aurora, and I know that it’s all quite decent and tidy (though not really like a princess a bit), and that she knows how to turn everything about and put it best end foremost, just as I do, like, though I oughtn’t to say it, no doubt. Well, you have been, and more than once, and I have had nothing to do with it; of which I am very glad now, for reasons that you perfectly know—you’re too honest a man to pretend you don’t. Therefore, when I see you going again, I just inquire of you, as you inquired of her, what good does it do you?”
“I like it—I like it, my dear,” said Paul, with his fresh, unembarrassed smile.