Cornelius looked exasperated.
"Thank you, Daisy," he said, with an indignant laugh, "thank you! I am no one; but I give you the fidgets!"
"Why, what have I done now?" I asked, amazed. "How is it, Cornelius, that
I so often offend you without even knowing why?"
"And is not that the exasperating part of the business?" he exclaimed, a little desperately. "If you cared a pin for me, you would know—you would guess."
"If I cared a pin for you!" I began; my tears checked the rest.
He stopped in the act of rising, to look down at me with a strange mixture of love and wrath.
"I'll tell you what, Daisy," he said, and his voice trembled and his lips quivered, "I'll tell you what, it is an odd thing to feel so much anger against you and yet so much fondness. I feel as if I could do anything to you, but I cannot bear to see you shed those few tears. Daisy, have the charity not to weep."
He again sat by me. I checked my tears. He wiped away those that still lingered on my cheek. I looked up at him and asked, a little triumphantly:
"Cornelius, where was the use of your flying out so?"
"You may well say so," he replied, rather bitterly. "Do you think I don't know that if 1 were cool and careless, you would like me none the worse; but what avails the knowledge, since I never can use it against you?"