But Julia did stand it. She admired Tom for his exterior, but the admiration of no moderately sensible woman could overlook rodomontade so exceedingly desperate. It was trespassing too boldly on the proprieties to utter such nonsense to a gentlewoman, and Tom, who had got his practice in a very low school, was doomed to discover that he had overreached himself.
"I am not certain I quite understand you, Mr. Thurston," answered the half-irritated, half-amused young lady; "your language is so very extraordinary—your images so unusual—"
"Say, rather, that it is your own image, loveliest incorporation of perceptible incarnations," interrupted Tom, determined to go for the whole, and recalling some rare specimens of magazine eloquence—"Talk not of images, obdurate maid, when you are nothing but an image yourself."
"I! Mr. Thurston—and of what is it your pleasure to accuse me of being the image?"
"O! unutterable wo—yes, inexorable girl, your vacillating 'yes' has rendered me the impersonation of that oppressive sentiment, of which your beauty and excellence have become the mocking reality. Alas, alas! that bearded men,"—Tom's face was covered with hair—"Alas, alas! that bearded men should be brought to weep over the contrarieties of womanly caprice."
Here Tom bowed his head, and after a grunting sob or two, he raised his handkerchief in a very pathetic manner to his face, and THOUGHT to himself—"Well, if she stand THAT, the Lord only knows what I shall say next."
As for Julia, she was amused, though at first she had been a little frightened. The girl had a good deal of spirit, and she had tant soit peu of mother Eve's love of mischief in her. She determined to "make capital" out of the affair, as the Americans say, in shop-keeping slang.
{tant soit peu = an ever so tiny amount}
"What is the 'yes,' of which you speak," she inquired, "and, on which you seem to lay so much stress?"
"That 'yes' has been my bane and antidote," answered Tom, rallying for a new and still more desperate charge. "When first pronounced by your rubicund lips, it thrilled on my amazed senses like a beacon of light—"