“Go along with your nonsense, Rue. You talk below your great understanding, because you think it suits me”.
“Perhaps I do”, said Rufus, “perhaps I do now and then, my dear: you always hit the truth so. But is it not better to do that than to talk Greek to my Rosa”?
“I am sure I donʼt know; and I am sure I donʼt care either. When have I heard you say anything, Rufus, so wonderful, and so out of the way, that I, poor I, couldnʼt understand it? Please to tell me that, Rufus”.
“My darling, consider. You are exciting yourself so fearfully. You make me shake all over”.
“Then you should not say such things to me, Rufus. Why, Rue, you are quite pale”!—What an impossibility! She might have boiled him in soda without bringing him to a shrimp–colour.—“Come into the house this moment, I insist upon it, and have two glasses of sherry. And you do say very wonderful things, much too clever for me, Rufus; and indeed, I believe, too clever for any woman in the world, even the one that wrote Homer”.
Rosa Hutton ran into the house, and sought for the keys high and low; then got the decanter at last out of the cellaret, and brought out a bumper of wine. Crafty Rufus stopped outside, thoroughly absorbed in an autumn rose; knowing that she liked to do it for him, and glad to have it done for him.
“Not a drop, unless you drink first, dear. Rosa, here under the weeping elm: you are not afraid of the girls who are making the bed, I hope”!
“I should rather hope not, indeed! Rue, dear, my best love to you. Do you think Iʼd keep a girl in the house I was afraid to see through the window”?
To prove her spirit, Mrs. Hutton tossed a glass of wine off, although she seldom took it, and it was not twelve oʼclock yet. Rufus looked on with some dismay, till he saw she had got the decanter.