"I say, let go my arm, will you?"
The last was said in a rising voice, as he reached the crest of irritation, and jerking his sleeve so roughly from her clasp, he accomplished the desired freedom, but the look on Sunny's face stayed with him all the way down those apartment stairs—he ignored the elevator—and to the door of the house. There he stopped short, and without more ado, retraced his steps, sprang up the stairs in a great hurry, and jerking open his door again, Jerry returned to his home. He discovered Sunny curled on the floor, with her head buried in the seat of his favourite chair—the one occupied that afternoon by the mischief-making Jinx.
"Sunny! I'm awfully sorry I was such a beast. Say, little girl, look here, I'm not myself. I don't know what I'm doing."
Sunny slowly lifted her face, revealing to the relieved but indignant Jerry a face on which it is true there were traces of a tear or two, but which nevertheless smiled at him quite shamelessly and even triumphantly. Jerry felt foolish, and he was divided between a notion to remain at home with the culprit—she had done nothing especially wrong, but he felt that she was to blame for something or other—or follow his first intention of going out for the night—just where, he didn't know—but anywhere would do to escape the thought that had come to him—the thought of Sunny's probable engagement to Jinx. However, Sunny gave him no time to debate the matter of his movements for the evening. She very calmly assisted him to remove his coat, hung up his hat, and when she had him comfortably ensconced in his favourite chair, had herself lit his pipe and handed it to him, she drew up a stool and sat down in front of his knees, just as if, in fact, she was entirely guiltless of an engagement of which Jerry positively did not intend to approve. Her audacity, moreover, was such that she did not hesitate to lay her left hand on Jerry's knee, where he might get the full benefit of the radiant light from that ring. He looked at it, set down his pipe on the stand at his elbow, and stirred in that restless way which portends hasty arising, when Sunny:
"Jerry, Jinx are come to-day to ask me make marriage with him."
"The big stiff. I pity any girl that has to go through life with that fathead."
"Ho! I are always lig' thad fat grow on Jinx. It look very good on him. I are told him so."
"Matter of taste of course," snarled Jerry, fascinated by the twinkling of that ring in spite of himself, and feeling at that moment an emotion that was dangerously like hatred for the girl he had done so much for.
"Monty and Bobs are also ask me marry wiz them." Sunny dimpled quite wickedly at this, but Jerry failed to see any humour in the matter. He said with assumed loftiness: