"Don't do that, I say!"
"Keep your hands off me, will you?"
"Don't come so close."
"Keep off—keep off, I say."
"I don't like it."
"For heaven's sake, Sunny, will nothing teach you civilised ways?"
At these times Sunny always retired very meekly to a distant part of the room, where she would remain very still and crushed looking, and, shortly, Jerry, overcome with compunction, would coax her to a nearer proximity mentally and physically.
Another disturbing trick which Jerry never had had the heart to ban was that of kneeling directly in front of him, her two hands upon his own knees. From this vantage point, with her friendly expressive and so lovely face raised to his, she would naïvely pour out to him her innocent confidences. After all, he savagely argued within himself, what harm in the world was there in a little girl kneeling by your side, and even laying her head, if it came down to that, at times upon a fellow's knee? It took a rotten mind to discover anything wrong with that, in the opinion of Jerry Hammond.
However, there is a limit to all things, and that limit was reached on a certain evening in early spring, a dangerous season, as we all know. "If you give some people an inch they'll take a mile," Jerry at that time angrily muttered, the humour of the situation not at all appealing to him.