“You’re all of a tremble.” She put out her hand and laid it on his own as if she had been a nurse feeling his pulse.
“Very likely. I’m a nervous little beast,” he said.
“Any one would be nervous to think of anything so awful. And when it’s yourself!” The girl’s manner represented the dreadfulness of such a contingency. “You require sympathy,” she added in a tone that made him perversely grin; the words sounded like a medical prescription.
“A tablespoonful every half-hour.” And he kept her hand, which she was about to draw away.
“You’d have been nicer too,” Millicent went on.
“How do you mean, I’d have been nicer?”
“Well, I like you now,” said Miss Henning. And this time she drew away her hand as if, after such a speech, to recover her dignity.
“It’s a pity I’ve always been so terribly under the influence of women,” Hyacinth sighed again as he folded his arms.
He was surprised at the delicacy with which she replied. “You must remember they’ve a great deal to make up to you.”
“Do you mean for my mother? Ah she’d have made it up if they had let her! But the sex in general have been very nice to me,” he declared. “It’s wonderful the kindness they’ve shown me and the amount of pleasure I’ve derived from their society.”