“I believe I am. You will think the pastime very unfeminine; but it is a caprice of mine, and papa is very indulgent.”
“You are also a very courageous rider, I hear.”
“There are very few horses I should fear to mount.”
“And now, Theresa, will you confess that your favourite author is not the ‘Family Herald?’”
She laughed outright at this, and exclaimed:
“The most wonderful part of it all is, that I should ever have got you to believe the nonsense I talked.”
“It is no proof of my stupidity, but of your cleverness.”
“Oh, how rude I was!” she cried, looking at me almost gaily, and losing her subdued manner. “How you stared when I refused to take your arm and to give you my cup to put down! I was silly to misbehave myself so to you; but rather than allow any man to hang about me with sickly compliments, owing wholly to commercial inspirations, I would have acted ten times more boldly and rudely, and never have rested until I had driven him out of the house, detesting my very name!”
“I believe you,” said I, amused by the gleam in her eyes, and by her recurrence to some points of the character she had discarded.
“But we won’t talk of it. Tell me about yourself and Conny. Are you engaged?”