“If the opinion of a comparative stranger is of any use to you,” said Robinette, standing on the rock and scraping her stockinged foot free of mud, “I believe in you, personally! You don’t seem a bit ‘jilty’ to me! I’d let you marry my sister to-morrow and no questions asked!”
“I didn’t know you had a sister,” cried Lavendar.
“I haven’t; that’s only a figure of speech; just a phrase to show my confidence.”
“And isn’t it ungrateful to be obliged to say I can’t marry your sister, after you have given me permission to ask her!”
“Not only ungrateful but unreasonable,” said Robinette saucily, turning her head to look up the river and discovering from her point of vantage a moving object around the curve that led her to make hazardous remarks, knowing rescue was not far away. “What have you against my sister, pray?”
“Very little!” he said daringly, knowing well that she held him in her hand, and could make him dumb or let him speak at any moment she desired. “Almost nothing! only that she is not offering me her sister as a balm to my woes.”
“She has no sister; she is an only child!––There! there!” cried Robinette, “the tide is coming up again, and the mud banks off in that direction are all covered with water! I see somebody in a boat, rowing towards us with superhuman energy. Oh! if I hadn’t worn a white dress! It will not come smooth; and my lovely French hat is ruined by the dampness! My one shoe shows how inappropriately I was shod, and whoever is 169 coming will say it is because I am an American. He will never know you wouldn’t let me go upstairs and dress properly.”
“It doesn’t matter anyway,” rejoined Mark, “because it is only Carnaby coming. You might know he would find us even if we were at the bottom of the river.”