“Do I use it so much?” Godfrey asked.
And the girl replied:
“I heard you once at Oakwood, when you did not know I was there in the kitchen, say ‘by George,’ and ‘by Jove,’ three times right along, and you called your father the ‘governor,’ and one of the maids said she supposed it was Yankee slang.”
Godfrey’s face was scarlet at this reproof, which he knew he merited, and for a moment he did not know what to say. Soon rallying, however, he said, good-naturedly:
“I guess I am rather given to slang,—the girls at home nag me about it all the time, and I do it to tease them; but I’ll quit it now, by Jo—I beg your pardon. I did not know I was so given to it, and I will reform, by George! There! that was to finish up.”
And Godfrey laughed heartily at himself, while Gertie, too, joined in the laugh, and thought how handsome he was, and what white, even teeth he had, and hoped he was not angry with her. So when he said to her next: “Gertie, if I really try to reform and quit my slang, will you promise to like me a little?” she answered quickly: “Yes, and I like you now,—some, you know,—though I did not like you to stare at me so when I was in the cab at Mrs. Barrett’s gate; but when I saw you in church at the wedding, I thought you very nice, and kept on thinking so until you kissed me, when I was very angry; but I’m over it now, and you’ll never kiss me again.”
That was a fixed fact in her mind, but Godfrey was not so sure of it, and he said to her seriously:
“Gertie, I am sure you are very good and generous, and I really mean to reform, and I want you to promise me one thing. You are going to Hampstead, I believe?”
Yes, Gertie supposed she was, “but,” she added, “I shall not see you, of course.”
“Why not?” he asked, and she replied: