“Don’t be maudlin,” I retorted. “Would you mind letting my hand go?” I felt sure Bella could hear.
“Oh, come now, Kit,” he implored, “we’ve always got along so well. It’s a shame to let a thing like this make us bad friends. Aren’t you ever going to forgive me?”
“Never,” I said promptly. “When I once get away, I don’t want ever to see you again. I was never so humiliated in my life. I loathe you!”
Then I turned around, and, of course, there was Aunt Selina with her eyes protruding until you could have knocked them off with a stick, and beside her, very red and uncomfortable, Mr. Harbison!
“Bella!” she said in a shocked voice, “is that the way you speak to your husband! It is high time I came here, I think, and took a hand in this affair.”
“Oh, never mind, Aunt Selina,” Jim said, with a sheepish grin. “Kit—Bella is tired and nervous. This is a h—deuce of a situation. No—er—servants, and all that.”
But Aunt Selina did mind, and showed it. She pulled the unlucky Harbison man through the door and closed it, and then stood glaring at both of us.
“Every little quarrel is an apple knocked from the tree of love,” she announced oratorically.
“This was a very little quarrel,” Jim said, edging toward the door; “a—a green apple, Aunt Selina, a colicky little green apple.” But she was not to be diverted.
“Bella,” she said severely, “you said you loathed him. You didn’t mean that.”