“Capricious, beautiful fairy! how shall I win you to seriousness? Fairest Petronilla, I would serve for this little hand even as Jacob served for Rachel!”
“Mr. Garnet, it’s real polite of you to say so, but you’ll excuse me for saying I’d a good deal rather you wouldn’t. You’ve been here six years now, and if I thought I was to undergo six more like them, I’d take the first bar of soft-soap I could find and put an immediate end to my melancholy existence.”
“Mocking still! Oh, beautiful Petronilla! how shall I reach this willful heart?”
“There’s no heart there, Mr. Garnet; it took a trip to the fast city of Gotham three years ago, and hasn’t come back since.”
“With Raymond Germaine?” he said, with a sharp flash of his eyes.
“Ex-actly; you’ve struck the right thing in the middle—hit the nail straight on the head—jumped, with your accustomed sagacity, at my exact meaning. After all, you’re not half so stupid as you look, Mr. Garnet.”
“Miss Lawless,” he broke out, angrily, “this levity is as unbecoming as it is unnecessary. I have asked you a question, which, as a lady, you are bound to answer.”
“Mr. Garnet, look here,” said Pet: “did papa hire you to knock reading, writing and spelling into me, or to make love?”
“Miss Lawless!”
“Perhaps, though,” said Pet, in a musing tone, “it’s customary with tutors when winding-up a young lady’s education, to put her through a severe course of love-making, that she may know how to act and speak properly when occasion requires. Mr. Garnet, excuse me, I never thought of it before; I see it all now. Just begin at the beginning again, if it’s not too much trouble, and you’ll see how beautifully I’ll go through with it.”