"Oh, well," I said, "so long as you don't let your little arrangement get abroad, I don't expect it will harm Eweword."
"No fear of it getting abroad. I've threatened him if it does that a contradiction that will be true will also get abroad by being put in the 'Noonoon Advertiser.'"
Next night, however, I found Dawn stamping on something glittering that spread about the floor, and by inquiry elicited—
"That infernal 'Dora' Eweword has had the cheek to give me a ring, and that's what I've done with it, and that's all the hope he has of ever marrying me," she exclaimed, bringing the heel of her high-arched foot another thump on the fragments.
"He's a bit too quick with his signs and badges of slavery. He's so complacent with himself, and thinks he's ousted the 'red-headed mug' as he calls him, that I hate him."
"He has a right to be complacent. You have given him reason to be. He has won you, so you have told him, and he believes you."
"Yes, I know, and it makes me all the madder to think of it."
I suppressed a chuckle; even before attaining my teens I had never been so splendidly, autocratically young as this beautiful high-spirited creature!
"Let things settle awhile, and then we'll pour them off the dregs," I advised.