“Oh, Sally!” uttered Peggy reproachfully. “Thee can’t mean it? Why, mother and I expect all of you to stay the night. Beside, ’tis too cold for thee to go out.”
“The very thing I told her,” exclaimed Betty. “And she said,” and a note of indignation quavered into Betty’s voice, “that if it were warm enough to need a fan it was warm enough to go out.”
“But, Betty, why do you use a fan in such weather?” questioned Robert Dale laughing. “Here it is so cold that we can scarce keep warm, and Mistress Owen hath called Sukey twice to attend the fire. Yet there you sit and wave that fan. I have wished to ask you about it all day.”
“Why, Robert, does thee not know that a fan is to a woman what a gun is to a soldier—a weapon of offense and of defense?” explained Betty airily. “When one is conversing should a pause occur in the conversation one may offset any embarrassment by fanning slowly. So!” She plied the fan to and fro as she explained.
“And do you need it often, Betty?” he asked slyly.
“Now that is mean, Robert. I would not have thought it of thee,” pouted Betty. “I shall tell no more secrets anent the use of the fan, sir. Thee would not insinuate anything so ungallant, would thee, Captain Johnson?”
“No,” answered the youth blushing deeply at being so appealed to, and speaking with difficulty. “I would not, Mistress Betty. You—you mean—there would be no pause, would there?” He stopped short as a burst of merriment in which even Betty joined broke from the others. “What did I say?” he asked in alarm. “What is it?”
At this moment there came the sound of many feet in the hallway, and Sukey’s voice was heard protesting loudly:
“Dar ain’t nobody heah but de fambly, Mistah Officah. De fambly and der company. ’Tain’t no mannah ob use disturbin’ dem. Der ain’t no Britisher ’roun’ heah nohow.”