“Do you think that you could give me just a sort of a kiss, Eoa? People always do, you know. And, indeed, I feel that you ought.”
“I scarcely know what is right, Bob, after all the things they have told me. But now, you know, you must guide me.”
“Then, Iʼll tell you what. Just let me give you one. The leaves are coming out so.”
“Well, thatʼs a different thing,” said Eoa. “Amy canʼt see us, can she?”
Sir Cradock Nowell was very angry when his niece came home, and told him, with an air of triumph, all that Bob had said to her.
“That butterfly–hunting boy, Eoa! To think of his presuming so! A mere boy! A boy like that!”
“Thatʼs the very thing, uncle. Perhaps if he had been a girl, you know, I should not have liked him half so much. And as for his hunting butterflies, I like him all the better for that. And weʼll hunt them all day long.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Uncle Cradock, smiling at the young girlʼs earnestness in spite of all his wrath; “that is your idea of married life then, is it? But I never will allow it, Eoa: he is not your equal.”
“Of course not, uncle. He is my superior in every possible way.”
“Scarcely so, in the matter of birth; nor yet, my child, I fear, in a pecuniary sense.”