He was striding rapidly up and down in front of her, and his growing wrath was so ill concealed under a very obvious effort at patience, that she could not resist a faint chuckle. He caught it and stopped short.
"You're laughing at me?" he declared, half interrogatively.
"Oh, Roger," she cried, "how could you think that."
"You were ... I heard you."
"I wasn't."
"Now what's the use of saying that?" he demanded.
"Don't you dare talk to me like that!" She was bolt upright herself, and wrath flamed in her own eyes. "Don't you ever dare use that tone to me, Roger Wynrod."
"I'm sorry," he said humbly, as if he really had committed a crime of incredible enormity. Then with one last gasp of justification, he added a timid "But you did...."
She would not allow him to finish. Quite illogically, but quite completely, she had changed the positions. From being the defence she had managed to make herself the prosecution, and Roger, being thoroughly masculine, was utterly dumfounded at the shift. And she, being as equally feminine, took up her new position with renewed vigour. Her voice was full of a most righteous scorn when she spoke.
"I didn't laugh at you. But suppose I did. I'd be justified. Why should I want to marry you? You're not even a man yet. You're just a boy. You've never done anything a man should. You even let that kid Jenkins beat you this afternoon. You're just a good-for-nothing lazybones, that's what you are, and you want me to marry you."