“Encourage him in what?” she asked, demurely.
“In—in—his attentions to you,” said the Philosopher.
She smiled sweetly, but said nothing.
“I don’t consider it a good match,” went on the Philosopher.
“Oh! Wouldn’t it light?” she asked, innocently. “I thought it was a wax one—not one of those things that must have its own box.”
The Philosopher’s mouth twitched under his moustache and his eyes sparkled. But he maintained a dignified demeanour.
“I wasn’t speaking of either a Vesta or of a Bryant and May,” he said. “And you know I wasn’t.”
She drew a small rustic bench towards him and sat down very nearly at his feet,—then looked up from under her garden hat.
“What are you reading?” she asked.
The Philosopher wished her eyes would not swim in such liquid blue, and that the garden hat was not quite so becoming.