Teazer and I had very little to say to each other for the rest of the evening. I was really so afraid of her that I had not the courage to be polite. When I offered to take her cup from her, she looked at me so angrily and clung to the saucer so tenaciously that I might well have thought she regarded me as a thief, who wanted to make away with her father’s crockery. Her manners were deplorably vulgar. She lay back in an arm-chair, and stuck her legs out in such a way that I wondered her father didn’t jump up and kick them in.
And what extraordinary delusion could he be labouring under in believing her well-read? He left the room for a short time during the evening, and finding myself alone with my half-civilised cousin, I felt myself under an obligation to address her. Willing to take her father’s word that she was well-read, I thought I would get her upon the subject of books, and asked her that very tea-party question, who was her favourite author.
“The ‘Family Herald,’” she answered.
I burst into a laugh. Her reply was so ridiculous, that I couldn’t have preserved my gravity had she even produced her revolver.
“Your papa told me,” said I, “that you are a very great reader.”
“And what right have you to doubt his word?”
“Pray don’t think I do,” I stammered, rendered somewhat apprehensive by a gleam in her eyes.
“What made you laugh at me?”
“I thought you were laughing at me.”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” she exclaimed, with an air of great contempt. “I must like people to laugh at them.”