“Don't you like it?”
“It's a very nice name, for some people,” he said guardedly.
“You don't like it. Why?”
There was no evading the directness of that demand. “I never knew but one girl named Carol,” he said. “She squinted.”
“What of it? I don't squint. Do I? Do I? DO I?”
With each repetition of her defiance she took one step nearer him, until at the last she was fairly standing on tiptoe under his nose. Cyrus the Gaunt looked down into those radiant eyes that grew wider and deeper and deeper and wider, until his heart, which had been slipping perilously of late, fell into them and was hopelessly lost. “Do I?” she demanded once more.
Cyrus responded with a loud yell. Inappropriate as the outcry was, it saved a situation becoming potentially dangerous, for not far below those luminous eyes was a dimple that flickered at the corner of a challenging mouth; unconsciously challenging, doubtless, yet—And then Fluff, opportunely descrying her imaginary butterfly on the side of Cyrus's trouser-leg, made a flying leap and drove ten keen claws through the fabric into the skin beneath. Her mistress dislodged the too ardent entomologist, and apologized demurely.
“You see,” said she, “you've become an intimate of the household. When you're too busy to come and see us, Fluff and I will peek out and admire you as you go plunging past on your irresistible course.”
“It's going to be a lonely job,” said Cyrus the Gaunt wistfully, “compared to this one.”
“Nonsense!” she retorted briskly as she handed him a dollar bill. “Here's your pay. You'll be too busy to be lonely. Good luck, Mr. Engineer.”