“Oh, I am only looking at the matter in a business light. If I do your work, I should like to be sure of my wages.”
“How can you talk in such a horrid mercenary way? It’s mean, ungentlemanly of you to try to entrap me like this! I could not have imagined——”
“Please let us be business-like. Only, believe me, I had no idea of setting a trap.”
“Do you mean to say that if I refuse to let you speak to me again you won’t go?”
“That is not the question, allow me to remark. I ask you whether, if I go, I may enter upon the forbidden subject when I come back?”
“I believe you are going whether I say Yes or No.” She looked at him sharply, but he did not change countenance in the least. “Why should you take it into your head to spoil a thing that ought to be so splendid, by tacking on an odious condition to it?”
“I am afraid you won’t find it easy to move me either by hard words or soft ones. Is it a bargain?”
“If you mean that I am to promise to marry you if you go——” cried Mabel, her eyes blazing.
“I mean nothing of the kind. That is not in the bond. If I have such a curious fancy for being rejected by you that I am willing to accept another refusal as the price of my services on this occasion, don’t you think you are getting off rather cheaply on the whole?”
Mabel laughed shamefacedly. “I believe you have only been trying to tease me all along,” she said. “Very well; it is a bargain, then.”