“She seemed to enjoy your verses.”
“Pure bluff to put me off my guard,” he averred. “We’re like a pair of beggars knocking at the same gate.”
“How so?”
She was amused at his obvious humour, and interested; proving his point, he told her, that the alien would love him better than the native.
“How so?” he repeated. “Well, she was the clever, unusual one before I came. Isn’t it true? I see it is. Now I’m proving how easy is all that so-called Irish wit.”
“I’m listenin’, Jawn de Lancey Gallagher,” Phœbe leaned her red head far over the table. “But don’t tempt me to punish you.”
“Maybe I might,” said he, “if I knew the penalty.”
“Well,” she considered, “fight fair, or I may be tempted to go to extremes.”
“And what’d that be?”
“Marry you,” she said.