“Yes, I would, child, you are too young to smoke.”
“Child!” repeated Gillie, in a tone of reproach, “too young! Why, Susan, there’s only two years between you an’ me—that ain’t much, you know, at our time of life.”
“Well, what then? I don’t smoke,” said Susan.
“True,” returned Gillie, with an approving nod, “and, to say truth, I’m pleased to find that you don’t. It’s a nasty habit in women.”
“It’s an equally nasty habit in boys. Now, do as I bid you directly.”
“When a man is told by the girl he loves to do anythink, he is bound to do it—even if it wor the sheddin’ of his blood. Susan, your word is law.”
He turned and tossed the cigar-end out of the window. Susan laughingly stooped, kissed the urchin’s forehead, and called him a good boy.
“Now,” said she, “what do you mean by sayin’ that this is a curious world? Do you refer to this part of it, or to the whole of it?”
“Well, for the matter of that,” replied Gillie, crossing his legs, and folding his hands over his knee, as he looked gravely up in Susan’s pretty face, “I means the whole of it, this part included, and the people in it likewise. Don’t suppose that I go for to exclude myself. We’re all coorious, every one on us.”
“What! me too?”