“The apples were awfully nice, though,” said Miss Perry, like a true daughter of Eve.
The high personage who controls the limelight continued to play most embarrassing tricks with the light of the morning. The hapless Jim Lascelles felt himself to be no match for that master hand.
“Goose Girl,” said Jim, defiantly, “assuming for a moment that I made myself famous enough to buy back the Red House at Widdiford, with the strawberry beds and the apple orchards, and the old wicket-gate that leads into the back lane which takes you straight to the Parsonage—would you keep the promise that you made when you were a long-legged person of seven, with a very large appetite, and I was a chubby subject of thirteen and a half with rather thin trousers?”
“Yes, Jim, I would,” said Miss Perry, with remarkable promptitude, frankness, and sincerity.
“There, now I’ve done it,” groaned Jim. “It was bound to happen. I knew the royal daylight would provoke me to make a cad of myself before it had done playing its tricks. But if people will have yellow hair, and they will wear yellow gauntlets to match it, and that fellow upstairs will fling the limelight all over the place, how can a poor painting chap help himself?”
Miss Perry had grown very grave. She was silent for twenty-five seconds.
“Jim,” said she, with slow-drawn solemnity, “if you do marry anybody, I r-r-really think it ought to be Muffin.”
“That Ragamuffin!”
“She is such a sweet,” said Miss Perry. “And she is so pretty; and dearest papa says she is so clever; and of course you know I am rather a Silly.”
“All the world knows it.”