“But this is talk,” says I, determined to correct his youthful arrogance. “A kinless beggar may not aspire to the hand of a princess.”
“And does not wish to do,” says he, and made me wince. It seemed that when it came to fisticuffs he could hit the harder.
“Yet if you did you could never marry me, you know. A cat may look at a king, but beyond that it never goes.”
“That is as may be,” he replied; “but man proposes, God disposes, and what doth woman do?”
“Acquiesces, I suppose,” says I, and groaned to think so.
“Extremely true,” says he, “woman acquiesces. And if Man, in the person of myself, proposed to make a husband for you, your husband I should be unless God disposed it otherwise, which is not likely, for Heaven hath been very much on my side hitherto. Deny, an you can, that if to-morrow morning I so much as put my little finger up and whistled to you, you would be in my arms before the evening.”
“I do deny it,” says I so fiercely that the blood rushed to my face.
“Of course you do,” saye he, “you would not be a woman else. You can lie as handsomely as any. But I’m thinking, my pretty Kate, I should make you a monstrous fine Petruchio.”
“Bah!” I cries with monstrous scorn of him, “the boldest rogue outside the pillory, the raggedest beggar outside a ballad, playing Petruchio to my Lady Barbara! Have you blood, boy? have you titles? have you acres?”
“I have a heart, and I have a fist with which to caress and to defend you,” says he, with a terrible simple candour that pierced my breast like steel; “and I think I should make you the finest husband in the world. That is if I cared to do so—which I don’t!”