"She is a true, good girl, innocent of any evil intention whatsoever——"
"I pray you, Euan, spare me your excited rhapsodies. If you prefer this most bewitching—minx——"
"She is no minx!" I retorted hotly; and Lois as hotly faced me, pink to her ears with exasperation.
"You do favour her! You do! You do! Say what you will, you are ever listening for the flutter of her petticoats on the stairs, ever at her French heels, ever at moony gaze with her—and a scant inch betwixt your noses! So that you come not again to me vowing what you have vowed to me—I care not how you and she conduct——"
"I do prefer you!" I cried, furious to be so misconstrued. "I love only one, and that one is you!"
"Oh, Euan, yours is a most broad and catholic heart; and any pretty penitent can find her refuge there; and any petticoat can flutter it!"
"Yours can. Even your fluttering rags did that!"
She flushed: "Oh, if I were truly weak and silly enough to listen to you——"
"You never do. You give me no hope."
"I do give you hope! I am ever ladling it out to you as they ladle soupaan to the militia! I say to you continually that never have I so devotedly loved any man——"