“There!” she said. “That’s what we women do to—babies! Kiss the place and make it well! All sentiment! Better now?”
“Positively I think it is!” admitted the Philosopher, his eyes beginning to shine in quite a human and unphilosophical manner. “But what a goose you are! The absurdity—”
“Yes!” she interrupted quickly. “I quite agree with you! The absurdity of a clever man,—a learned man,—a distinguished man,—giving way to his emotions on account of a scratch! Well! But that’s the way you men always go on! You neglect the most serious things of life and you fret and fidget yourselves over the merest trifles! You are the slaves of your feelings! Even swearing! Oh! Now if it had been Jack—”
“Hang Jack!” said the Philosopher. “You’re always trotting him out! You’d better marry him!”
“Would you like me to?” she asked, demurely.
His arm was still round her waist. For a Philosopher he felt fairly comfortable. He peered under the garden hat—and found an expression of face that pleased him. Proud of his discovery he enjoyed it in silence for a while.
“Would I like you to marry Jack?” he repeated. “Well! Let me consider—you know these sort of questions take a long time to answer! ‘Would I like you to marry Jack?’ No!—I don’t think so—not just yet!”
CHAPTER II
“ONE thing I will say of you,” remarked the Philosopher, condescendingly, “and that is—you are not a Nagger!”
He and she were walking together across a meadow full of buttercups and daisies, and they had just been on the point of what the middle-classes politely call “words.” He was not without temper—she was not without spirit—hence the little breeze that had for the moment ruffled the calm of their platonic friendship. Her “sentimentalism,” however, had saved the situation. When she perceived that his irritability was fast developing into downright bearishness, she had suddenly raised her eyes and shown them full of tears.