'My dear Jerry, don't be foolish! You are but a boy compared with me, in my experience as a woman of the world especially. It is too absurd!'
'If you are older than me at all, it can only be by a year or two,' said Jerry, who thought it was not such a difficult matter to propose as he had first deemed it; 'and so, dearest Laura——'
'You must not address me thus.'
'But don't you call me Jerry?'
'There is a difference, and I may never do so again.'
'Don't say so; besides you cannot help me thinking of you as "Laura"?'
'Thought is free, but speech is not.'
'You will ever be Laura in my thoughts and in my heart, whatever you may be on my lips.'
Jerry said this with so much emotion that Mrs. Trelawney ceased to laugh at him, and gave her hand, saying,
'Jerry, let us be friends; be assured we can be nothing more, and, indeed, nothing better.'