“Say, Bell-Bell, will she, though?”
“Aha! Piquant, isn’t it?—an affair with a little dove of a Quaker! Remember that I can protect her. So you may come whenever you hear the piano—just to help you to reform, and we will stop and put on our other clothes and entertain you gravely. Then some day, when you have proved that you are quite respectable, and are received at the bedsides of elderly ladies, we will confess all—what sort of crime we are up to—what sort of clothes we wear at our rehearsals—where and when we met. No, all that must wait until I have her safely married and out of your reach. For, I tell you frankly, she says that she has one reason for liking you—you are tall.”
“Oh!” laughed Doctor Rem. “But, say, I have never made love to a Quaker in my life. However, thanks! I’m willing.”
“You are to be nothing but friends, do you hear? I won’t have her mouth turned down instead of up at the corners!”
Then, as a woman will, she forthwith tempted him to his destruction:
“She’s lovely, John! The very loveliest human being I have ever known! Oh, she and I are old friends. And that is the only reason I permit you and she to become old friends. While you were busy at such nasty things as administering the two parts of a seidlitz powder so that ebullition would take place in the stomach of the poor person at your college dispensary, I was making love to the little Quaker—who would have preferred a man.”
“Of course,” said John Rem.
“Oh, not ‘of course.’ But if you were not what you are, I would let you try to interest her. Nothing would please me better.”
“And, her—be hanged!” cried the young physician, with enthusiasm.
“If you were not what you are—a brute.”