Charley would have avoided that word “preposterous” had he bethought him, in time, how many p’s it contained. His face was red when he had stumbled and floundered through it, and his eyes a trifle stern. He had been a stammerer from boyhood, but of late his infirmity had begun to annoy him strangely.
“Then, modest young man, I suppose you have yet to learn the alphabet of mind-reading?”
“Yes,—that is, women’s minds.”
“Women’s minds? Do you think that we are harder to read than men? Do you think, for example, that people find it harder to see through such an unsophisticated girl as myself than such a deep philosopher as you?”
“You? Why, you are an unfathomable m-m-m-mystery?” (“Confound it!”)
“The idea! I a mystery? And this from you, unreadable sphinx!”
“Yes, and unfathomable! Why, I have no idea what you think upon the—upon—well, all sorts of subjects.”
Charley caressed with a shy glance the toes of his boots, and felt red.
“Indeed? How strange!” And she gazed upon the dots of boats and felt pale.
“Yes; for example, I have often wondered what in fact, for example, you thought, for instance, of—of—of—me, for instance. Oh, no, no, of course not, I beg your pardon; of course I never imagined for a moment, of course not, that you ever thought of me at all, in fact. What I mean is, that whenever you did think of me,—though I presume you never did for an instant, of course,—I mean that if by chance, when you had nothing else to think about, and I happened to pass by—Oh, Lord!” cried Charley, clasping in his hand his burning brow.