"You don't kiss anybody but me?" he said half playfully.
"Oh, no, sir," said Mary Ann, earnestly.
"What!" more lightly still. "Haven't you got half a dozen young men?"
Mary Ann shook her head, more regretfully than resentfully. "I told you I never go out—except for little errands."
She had told him, but his attention had been so concentrated on the ungrammatical form in which she had conveyed the information, that the fact itself had made no impression. Now his anger against Mrs. Leadbatter dwindled. After all, she was wise in not giving Mary Ann the run of the London streets.
"But"—he hesitated. "How about the—the milkman—and the—the other gentlemen?"
"Please, sir," said Mary Ann, "I don't like them."
After that no man could help expressing his sense of her good taste.
"Then you won't kiss anybody but me," he said, as he let her go for the last time. He had a Quixotic sub-consciousness that he was saving her from his kind by making her promise formally.
"How could I, Mr. Lancelot?" And the brimming eyes shone with soft light. "I never shall—never."