"Of course! Don't you suppose I know that?" I immediately asked in an injured tone. It is always safe to assume an injured air when you're arguing with a man, for it gives him quite as much pleasure to comfort you as it does to hurt you.
"I didn't—mean anything!" he hastened to assure me.
"Guilford merely jumped at the chance of your freeing yourself of this newspaper slavery," mother interceded. "You know what a humiliation it is to him—just as it is to me and to every member of the—Christie family."
My betrothed nodded so violently in acquiescence that his glasses flew off in space.
"You know that I am a Kentuckian in my way of regarding women, Grace," he plead. "I can't bear to see them step down from the pedestal that nature ordained for them!"
I turned and looked him over—from the crown of his intensely aristocratic fair head to the tip of his aristocratic slim foot.
"A Kentuckian?"
"Certainly!"
"A Kentuckian?" I repeated reminiscently. "Why, Guilford Blake, you ought to be olive-skinned—and black-eyed—and your shoes ought to turn up at the toes—and your head ought to be covered by a red fez—and you ought to sit smoking through a water-bottle of an evening, in front of your—your—"
"Grace!" stormed mother, rising suddenly to her feet. "I will not have you say such things!"