"True," he smiled, "for whose presence several poor gentlemen do sigh. Let us join 'em."
"Ah! You wish to be rid of me!" She laid down the pen and, leaning chin on hand, regarded him with eyes of meekness. "Do you wish to be rid of me?" she enquired humbly. "Do I weary you with my idle chatter, most grave philosopher?" She had a trick of pouting red lips sometimes when thinking and she did so now as she waited her answer.
"No!" said he.
"I could wish you a little more emphatic, sir and much more—more fiercely masculine—ferocity tempered with respect. Could you ever forget to be so preposterously sedate?"
"I climbed a wall!" he reminded her.
"Pooh!" she exclaimed, "and sat there as gravely unruffled, as proper and precise as a parson in a pulpit. See you now, perched upon a corner of the desk, yet you perch so sublimely correct and solemn 'tis vastly annoying. Could you ever contrive to lose your temper, I wonder?"
"Never with a child," he answered, smiling.
Lady Betty stiffened and stared at him with proud head upflung, grew very red, grew pale, and finally laughed; but her eyes glittered beneath down-sweeping lashes as she answered softly:
"'Deed, sir, I'm very contemptibly young, sir, immaturely hoydenish, sir, green, callow, unripe and altogether of no account to a tried man o' the world sir, of age and judgment ripe—aye, a little over-ripe, perchance. And yet, O!" my lady sighed ecstatic, "I dare swear that one day you shall not find in all the South country such a furiously-angry, ferociously-passionate, rampantly-raging old gentleman as Major John d'Arcy, sir!"
"And there's your aunt calling us, I think," said he, gently. Lady Betty bit her lip and frowned at her dainty shoe. "Pray let her wail, sir, 'tis her one delight when there chance to be a sufficiency of gentlemen to attend her, so suffer the poor soul to wail awhile, sir—nay, she's here!"