It was such pretty hair, he was always pleased to see it hanging about her ears, as had been its fashion when he had first met her—not so long ago. So he fought her for the hairpin while she ducked her head and threw it backwards, and laughed, and struggled in his grasp; to submit, of course, at last, to yield up the hairpin, to roast it, red hot in the fire, to watch it burn its malodorous passage through his pipe.
That ceremony over, she got him his boots, and would have laced them for him, and kissed them too, if he would have let her, and did grovel at his feet to arrange the roll of his stockings for him.
"You have got nice calves, Ted!" she told him. "I don't think I could love even you if you had sticks of things like Robert Anstey's."
"Oh, Bob's legs'll do all right," Ted said, loyally. He stamped a foot into the second boot, and in doing so ground some of the broken vase beneath his heel. He filliped her cheek, then, smiling into her eyes—
"You and your old woman's superstitions!" he said. "Perhaps you don't know I've a—what d'ye call it?—a portent in my own family—or had when I had a family," he told her, bending again over his boot. "Well, I have, then!"
"And what's a portent, silly? I daresay it's nothing to boast of."
"It's a little—white—DOG!"
He barked the last word at her, loud and sharp, his face suddenly projected into hers. She fell backward and sat on her heels.
"Ted! How horrid of you! What does it do?"
"I haven't the faintest notion."