“Have you ever been ill, Mr Melland?”
“I am thankful to say I have not.”
“But you have surely had a pain, or an ache, for a few hours at a time? Ear-ache, when you were a child, or toothache later on?”
“Oh, certainly! I’ve had my share of toothache, and the smaller ailments.”
“And when the spasms were on,—were you gentle and patient? Did you feel your character being ennobled, or did you rage and champ about like a mad bull?”
Jack laughed. It was impossible to resist it, at the sight of the mischievous face, and the sound of the exaggerated, school-girl simile.
“Well,” he conceded magnanimously, “perhaps the champing was the more in evidence. I was not citing myself as a model, Miss Mollie. I know quite well that—that I might be more patient than I am.”
“More patient! More! You are not patient at all. You are the most impatient person I ever met. If anyone dares even to have a different opinion from you, you can hardly contain yourself. I wish you could see your face! You look like this.”
Mollie drew herself up, making a valiant attempt to draw her eyebrows together, send out lightning sparks from her eyes, inflate her nostrils, and tug the ends of an imaginary moustache at one and the same time; and succeeded in looking at once so pretty and so comical that, instead of being convicted, Jack laughed more heartily than before.
“As bad as that? Really? I must be ferocious! It’s rather unkind of you to pitch into me like this, Miss Mollie, when I have just been paying you compliments. It’s a good thing I am going away so soon, as I am such a desperate character. There is no saying to what lengths Mr Farrell and I might get if we were long together.”