“Oh you do, you do!”
“For all that you don’t like it.”
“It isn’t so much what you do. It’s what she does.”
“How do you mean, what she does?”
“She makes Lady Aurora suffer.”
“Oh I can’t go into that,” said Paul. “A man feels such a muff, talking about the women who ‘suffer’ for him.”
“Well, if they do it I think a man might bear it!” Rosy retorted. “That’s what a man is. When it comes to being sorry, oh that’s too ridiculous!”
“There are plenty of things in the world I’m sorry for,” he patiently conceded. “One of them is that you should keep me gossiping here when I want to go out.”
“Oh I don’t care if I worry her a little. Does she do it on purpose?” Rosy continued.
“You ladies must settle all that together”—and he rubbed his hat with the cuff of his coat. It was a new one, the bravest he had ever possessed, and in a moment he put it on his head as if to re-enforce his reminder to his sister that it was time she should release him.