"Oh, my dear, it can't be! I am sure you are wrong, Deleah. Mr. Gibbon, do say she is wrong. It can't possibly be Mr. Boult."
Mr. Gibbon only threw back his head and loudly laughed.
Deleah was a little hurt that the boarder should have forgone his usual careful politeness to receive the exposition of her idea with ridicule. She contemplated him gravely till he stopped laughing and gazed with an apologetic, anxious gravity in his protruding, extraordinarily speaking eyes back at her. Then she turned from him to her mother.
"Why do you think it impossible, mama? Because Mr. Boult can't say agreeable things is no reason he cannot do them. Don't you know that there are poor shut-up souls who want to be nice, who long to be loved—who have to speak in the dumb language because they can't articulate?"
"Miss Deleah is right. That is so. That is so!" Mr. Gibbon eagerly affirmed.
"Well, then, Mr. Boult isn't blessed with a tongue to say smooth things; but the bird in the cage, the basket of sweets, the rose-pink azalea—they are his kind and polite speeches."
"My dear, what nonsense!" cried Mrs. Day, who did not wish to believe in
Mr. Boult as the author of such agreeable attentions.
But the Manchester man assented with enthusiasm: "Miss Deleah is right, ma'am," he said. "A man who could not get at Miss Deleah to say things to her might try to say them so."
"And you think Mr. Boult wants to say things to Deleah?" a scornful Bessie demanded.
"No, I don't, since you ask me. No, Miss Bessie."