"I'm very glad you think I'm pretty," she said with the most charming modesty. "If—oh, if you think so, perhaps you are not sorry that you are married."
"But I don't feel married," urged Ruddle desperately, "and I don't know what to do about it. It's by far the awkwardest situation I was ever in by long chalks, and it beats me, it fair beats me."
But surely there was a way out, thought Susan, and she wondered whether as his wife she might not suggest it.
"But you like me?"
"Oh, yes, to be sure," said Ruddle, "and I quite understand how I came to marry you. That is, I can understand how I wanted to, but what fair licks me is what you saw in me. Perhaps it was my bein' a long-tailed parson. Was it, now?"
"Not in the least," said Susan stoutly, "it was because you were you."
"But now I ain't what I was, and you must find it very embarrassing, ma'am."
"What I find embarrassing is your calling me 'ma'am,'" said Susan, with a snap that made Ruddle see that the skipper was right in other ways than his judgment of the lady's beauty.
"Very well," said Tom Ruddle in a great hurry, "I'll call you Susan if you like."
"Of course I like," said Susan; "and if you like you can call me Dilly Duck too."