“Oh, Archie is just as grand as she is,” said the girl, slightly offended; “and it is just his way to keep behind. I would like to see anybody giving my brother a touch of the lash!”
“It is not because he is your brother, but because he is himself,” said Eddy. “I don’t mean any offence. I mean that’s Rosamond’s way. She is like the governor, don’t you know. She has got a great deal of the devil in her. So have you, I should think.”
“Me!” said Marion, much shocked. “I am not what you think at all.”
“Yes,” said Eddy, “I am sure you are what I think. As nice as girls are made, but plenty of devilry, and a spirit for anything. That is precisely what I like best.”
“Well,” said Marion, “I will allow that I have a great deal of spirit, if that’s what you call the——; but you shouldn’t say bad words. Do you mean that girls are not made so nice as men? for I think you’re very impudent to say so, and me a girl that you are speaking to.”
“Girls,” said Eddy, with an air of authority, “are sometimes much better, and sometimes they are a great deal worse than men. There’s no medium in them. You are one of the nice ones, so of course you are a great deal nicer than a fellow like me, or even your brother. I am a dreadful little beggar, and that is the truth.”
“Oh, you like to say ill things of yourself.”
“No, I don’t, if they weren’t true. You hit me off exactly, the very first thing, when you said men had no object but to amuse themselves. You must be awfully clever as well as nice. I don’t see what we’re in the world for but to enjoy ourselves. I’m sure I didn’t ask to come, and I dare say I shan’t have a very long life, so I mean it to be a merry one, I can tell you. As for the governor,” said Eddy, “he has no right to complain. Rose is too good for him, but he deserves to have me to keep him in mind of how naughty he has been.”
“What have you done,” said Marion, interested, “that is so——naughty, as you say?”
“Oh, you would like to know?” he said, opening his eyes wide, with a laugh. “Perhaps if I were to tell you, you would never speak to me any more.”