“But that ’s the regular way,” ejaculated Phil, in evident bewilderment.
“To marry a girl when she does n’t choose to!” snapped Tibbie. “A man of any decency would find out—on the sly—if she wanted him.”
“She never would—”
“As if the fact that she would n’t was n’t enough!” continued Tibbie, with anything but Quaker meekness. “Dost think, if she wanted thee, she’d have been so offish?”
Phil, with a sadly puzzled look on his face, said, “I know I ain’t much of a sharp at courtin’, Miss Janice, an’ like as not I done it wrong, but I loves you, that ’s certain, an’ I would n’t do anything ter displeasure you, if I only know’d what you wanted. Dad he says that I was n’t rampageous enough ter suit a girl of spirit, an’ that if I’d squoze you now an’ again, ’stead of—”
“That ’s enough,” said Janice. “Mr. Hennion, there is the door.”
“Thou art a horrid creature!” added Tibbie.
“I ain’t goin’ till I’ve had it all out with you,” asserted Phil, with a dogged determination.
“Then you force us to leave you,” said Janice, rising.
Just as she spoke, the door was thrown open, and Mr. Meredith entered. His eye happened to fall first on Philemon, and without so much as a word of greeting to the girls, he demanded angrily, “Ho! what the devil are ye doing here? ’T is all of a piece that a traitor to his king should work by stealth.”