“Aye, but whose throat, child? ’Tis what all the world will be asking—whose?”
“Whose, indeed!” repeated my lady between white teeth. “Let me but find him—let me but be sure!”
“Heavens, Herminia!—and what then?”
“Then, if I could find no better champion, I’d ... thrash or fight him myself!”
“Cease, child, cease! Remit thy ravings; ’tis merest madness! Horrors, Herminia, how——”
“O Aunt Lucy, a Gad’s name cease gasping out alliterations on me—do!”
“Fie, miss! And you with your profane oaths and vulgar swearing indeed! Look at ye, with your great, strong body and hugeous powerful limbs! I protest thou’rt positively——”
“Aunt, dare to call me ‘strapping’ or ‘buxom’ and I’ll set you atop of the armoire yonder!”
“Nothing so feminine, Herminia!” retorted her very small aunt, with the utmost courage. “Brawny’s the word! Thou’rt positively brawny, a brawn——” Here a pantherine leap, a muffled scream, and my lady’s aunt, clasped in my lady’s arms, was whirled to the top of a tall press in adjacent corner, there to dangle two very small and pretty feet helplessly, to clutch and cower and whimper to be taken down.
“’Faith, aunt,” quoth my lady, “to see you so, none would ever believe you were a duchess and so great a lady.”