“I don’t want a chaperon. Why should I? It’s no fun having her poking round, and listening to every word one says. It’s ever so much nicer alone.”
“I don’t doubt it, but—in Rome one must do as the Romans do, Miss Briskett! In England a man does not take a girl to a theatre unchaperoned. It’s not the thing.”
“I don’t care a mite. It’s the custom with us, anyway, and there’s no country in the world where women are more respected. What’s the harm, I want to know!”
“No harm at all. That’s not the question. It’s simply not the custom.”
“Do you mean to say you refuse to take me alone, even if I ask you?”
“I do!”
“Then you’re a mean old thing, and I shan’t go at all!”
Guest laughed; an amused little laugh, in which there was an unwonted softness. Somehow, he quite enjoyed being called “a mean old thing” by Cornelia Briskett. There was an intimacy in the sound, which more than nullified the disparagement.
“I think you will! You are too ‘straight’ to punish me for what is not my fault. It would be much more amusing for me to take you about unattended, and so far as I’m concerned, I can afford to ignore conventions. A man can do as he likes. It is you I am thinking of. You may not approve of our ideas, but that does not alter their existence, or the fact that whip; you are here you must be judged by them. You would not like to be considered careless of your reputation?”
“I don’t care a mite what the old fossils, think.”