"I!" repeat I, positively laughing in my scorn of this accusation. "I hint! I imply! why, I could not do it, if I were to be shot for it! it is not in me!"
He does not immediately answer; still, he is looking aside, and his color changes.
"Ask mother, ask the boys, ask Barbara," cry I, in great excitement, "whether I ever could wrap up any thing neatly, if I wished it ever so much? Always, always, I have to blurt it out! I hint!"
"Hint! no!" he repeats, in a tone of vexed bitterness. "Well, no! no one could accuse you of hinting! Yours is honest, open cut and thrust!"
"If it is," retort I, bluntly, still speaking with a good deal of heat, "it is your own fault! I have no wish to quarrel, being such near neighbors, and—and—altogether—of course I had rather be on good terms than bad ones! When you let me—when you leave me alone—I almost—sometimes I quite like you. I am speaking seriously! I do."
"You do not say so?" again turning his head aside, and speaking with the objectionable intonation of irony.
"At home," pursue I, still chafing under the insult to my amiability, "I never was reckoned quarrelsome—never! Of course I was not like Barbara—there are not many like her—but I did very well. Ask any one of them—it does not matter which—they will all tell you the same—whether I did not!"
"You were a household angel, in fact?"
"I was nothing of the kind," cry I, very angry, and yet laughing: the laughter caused by the antagonism of the epithet with the many recollected blows and honest sounding cuffs that I have, on and off, exchanged with Bobby.
A pause.