“Rose, child,” quoth Sir John, uncocking and repocketing his pistols, “I am pleased with thee. ’S heart, I’m vastly pleased with thee! I rejoice that being fearful you commanded your fear and neither shrieked, swooned, squeaked, moaned, laughed, wept or fell to a fit o’ the vapours. Thank God, child, that thou’rt a fine, buxom, lusty country wench, sound o’ wind and limb, all wholesome flesh and blood and bone——”
“Oh, fie—hush and ha’ done!” she exclaimed, tossing her handsome head. “You make me sound as I were a prize cow!”
“Tush!” he laughed. “I do but take your body first. As to your mind——”
“I ha’ none—so never mind!” she retorted bitterly, and making the most of her stately height.
“Aye, but I do mind,” he answered seriously. “I mind infinitely, because ’tis your mind needeth a great deal o’ painful care. ’S life, girl, were your mind the peer o’ your body you’d be a creature without peer. The which, sounding paradoxical, is yet very truth.”
“’Stead of which,” she retorted angrily, “I am only a buxom country wench ... a poor maid, as you think, all body an’ no soul, an’ talk of as she were a piece o’ cattle! Oh, I could cry wi’ shame, I could!”
“Then I shall kiss you, Rose!”
“You—ah, you wouldn’t dare!”
“Not unless you cry, child. I can endure a woman’s scorn, her fleerings, even her caresses—but her tears melt my adamantine fortitude quite. So pray do not weep, Rose. And as for your sweet country ways, your rustic simplicity, God bless you for ’em, child. With your goddess-form uncramped by cursed, ’prisoning whalebone—with no rusks or busks or such damned contrivances to pinch your figure to the prevailing mode you are as the hand of Nature moulded you, a woman apt to motherhood, and therefore to be reverenced ... and a curse on all rusks.”