"By no means." His emphasis implied that he readily perceived which answer would give least offence. "Same time, if I can make your path more flowery—fail to see objections to such a course."
"I don't want you to trouble yourself."
"It wasn't the least mite of trouble," he assured her. "Why, those girls downstairs, whenever I roll my eyes, they just fly to do the thing I want."
"Do you think that is nice?" asked Eliza.
"Lovely—so convenient!"
"I do not like it."
"It don't follow that whenever they roll their eyes, I do what they want. Jemima! no. They might roll them, and roll them, and roll them, right round to the back of their heads; 'twouldn't have an atom of effect on me."
He waited to see some result from this avowal, but Eliza was looking at him as coldly as ever.
"In that respect," he added, "there ain't no one that interferes with your prerogative."
Eliza looked as if he had spoken in a foreign tongue. "I do not understand," she said, and in this she told a lie, but she told it so successfully that he really did not know whether she had understood, or whether it behooved him to speak more plainly.