“By Jove!” It’s all Percival has to say, and he says it.
Miss Devereux indulged in a low, musical laugh at her cavalier’s expense.
“You’re laughing at me?” said the bureaucrat, giving a tremendous tug to his moustache.
“I am,” was her reply.
“Why?”
“It’s singularly amusing to hear an Englishman focus all his energies upon his favorite exclamation.”
“And what do you say in Ireland?” he retorted, somewhat nettled.
“You must ask my brother.”
“If he waits till I ask him,” thought Percival, “he’ll be as gray as a badger.”
Mr. Percival indulged in another gaze at his fair companion, who was engaged in the unromantic task of enjoying her dinner, while he found himself hors de combat after a spoonful of soup and a devilled whitebait. He discovered a certain magnetism about her that irresistibly attracted him. The charm of her beauty was not in her golden hair, whose wavelets threw up the brilliancy of her rich color; not in the pure cream-tinted skin, not in the exquisitely delicate curve of the chin and cheek, nor in the sauciness of her retroussé nose; it was the unconscious pleasure in her face, a joy that positively breathed happiness from every feature.