Now Miss Jane was not very much of a prude; but Dempster was becoming too confident. He must be brought low again. So she lifted her book and said 'Shocking!'
'I beg your pardon,' he cried, vexed at finding the stumbling-block, which he had nearly rolled up to the top and kicked over the other side out of sight for ever, down at the bottom of the hill again. 'I didn't mean to say,' trying to twist his fingers into a hay-band, 'that your mind was like my legs—oh dear me! I've put both feet in it now!'
Miss Jane hid her face completely, but it was to conceal a smile.
Dempster smoothed his cheeks with both hands and held his head for a second or two, all of him gathered up in a more powerful effort to think than he had ever made in his life before.
'What can I do to make you forget?' he muttered.
'Ah!' he cried, after a second, pulling the book from Miss Jane's face as a child might have done, 'I think I'm going to have an idea.'
'You don't mean to say so!' said Miss Jane, leaning forward again in the same neat, pleasant way, with a laugh that was almost girlish.
'Yes, I believe I am,' said Dempster, sitting down on the calves of his legs with his hands on his knees, and looking up trustfully, like something in india-rubber.
'If I were to say,' he enunciated slowly, 'something contradicting emphatically what you can't at present forget, you might—eh—ah—forget?'
'Yes.'