“You need not say one word! I should not have thought it of you, that’s all!”
“But, Alice—”
“Why, what’s the matter?” asked I, bewildered.
“Oh, nothing!” said Alice, with a toss of her head. “Jack-Whack, I’ll tell you; she thinks I have been blabbing to you.”
“Thinks!”
“But I have not!”
“Do you mean to tell me that Jack, without a hint from you—actually—” she hesitated.
“‘Frolic rhythm of the scherzo!’” I shouted, in joyous derision; “and you positively used that phrase, you sentimental old fraud!”
Charley turned very red,—redder still, when Alice, relieved of the suspicion that he had been revealing their little love-mysteries, laughed merrily at his discomfiture.
“It was not quite so b-b-b-b-ad as that. I admit the ‘scherzo’ part; b-b-b-ut ‘frolic rhythm’! I was not so many kinds of an idiot as that amounts to.”