“Great Scott, Bab! Why the raiment?”
“For you,” I said in a low tone.
“Well, it makes a hit with me all right,” he said.
And came toward me.
When Jane Raleigh was first kissed by a member of the Other Sex, while in a hammick, she said she hated to be kissed until he did it, and then she liked it. I at the time had considered Jane as flirtatous and as probably not hating it at all. But now I knew she was right, for as I saw Tom coming toward me after laying father’s cigar on the piano, I felt that I could not bear it.
And this I must say, here and now. I do not like kissing. Even then, in that first embrase of to, I was worried because I could smell the varnish burning on the Piano. I therfore permited but one salute on the cheek and no more before removing the cigar, which had burned a large spot.
“Look here,” he said, in a stern manner, “are we engaged or aren’t we? Because I’d like to know.”
“If you are to demonstrative, no!” I replied, firmly.
“If you call that a kiss, I don’t.”
“It sounded like one,” I said. “I suppose you know more than I do what is a kiss and what is not. But I’ll tell you this—there is no use keeping our amatory affairs to ourselves and then kissing so the Butler thinks the fire whistle is blowing.”