“May-be she would, my pretty, and may-be she wouldn’t. I’m not one that likes hearing either rabbits or maidens start the squealing game. It fair gives me the shivers. Bert, he can stand it, but I never could. It’s nature, I suppose. A man can’t change his nature no more than a cow nor a horse.”
“I can’t understand you, uncle,” observed Gladys. “If I were in your place, I’m sure I shouldn’t be satisfied without at least kissing the girl I was going to marry. I’d find some way of getting round her, however sulky she was. Oh, I’m sure you don’t half know how nice Lacrima is to kiss!”
“I suppose she isn’t so mighty different, come to that,” replied the farmer, “than any other maid. I don’t mind if I give you a kiss, my beauty!” he added, encircling his niece with an affectionate embrace and kissing her flushed cheek. “There—there! Best let well alone, sweetheart, and leave your old uncle to manage his own little affairs according to his own fashion!”
But Gladys was not so easily put off. She had recourse to her fertile imagination.
“You should have heard what she said to me the other night, uncle. You know the way girls talk? or you ought to, anyhow! She said she hoped you’d go on being the same simple fool, after you were married. She said she’d find it mighty easy to twist you round her finger. ‘Why,’ she said, ‘I can do what I like with him now. He treats me as if I were a high-born lady and he were a mere common man. I believe he’s downright afraid of me!’ That’s the sort of things she says about you, uncle. She thinks in her heart that you’re just a fool, a simple frightened fool!”
“Darn her! she does, does she?” cried Mr. Goring, touched at last by the serpent’s tongue. “She thinks I’m a fool, does she? Well! Let her have her laugh. Them laughs best as laughs last, in my thinking!”
“Yes, she thinks you’re a great big silly fool, uncle. Of course it’s all pretence, her talk about wanting you to be like that; but that’s what she thinks you are. What she’d really like—only she doesn’t say so, even to me—would be for you to catch her suddenly round the waist and kiss her on the mouth, and laugh at her pretendings. I expect she’s waiting to give you a chance to do something of that sort; only you don’t come near her. Oh, she must think you’re a monstrous fool! She must chuckle to herself to think what a fool you are.”
“I’ll teach her what kind of a fool I am,” muttered Mr. Goring, “when I’ve got her to myself, up at the farm. This business of dangling after a maid’s apron strings, this kissing and cuddling, don’t suit somehow with my nature. I’m not one of your fancy-courting ones and never was!”
“Listen, uncle!” said Gladys eagerly, laying her hand on his arm. “Suppose I was to take her up to Cæsar’s Quarry this afternoon? That would be a lovely chance! You could come strolling round about four o’clock. I’d be on the watch; and before she knew you were there, I’d scramble out, and you could climb down. She couldn’t get away from you, and you’d have quite a nice little bit of love-making.”