"You give me great pleasure in saying this, Mrs. Fraser."
"I mean it. I find you frank and easy and kind. You are not in the least tiresome. When you first spoke to me I saw your face set out with compliments and mots, like any other man's might have been. But I swept this sugary French repast away and made you substitute hearty nourishing solids. This makes you agreeable."
Her grave innocent look forbade me to smile; yet it was not easy to preserve my gravity. I felt like a big boy lectured by some pretty little girl.
She stood looking pensively at her foot, which she waved to and fro on the heel; then exclaimed,
"I am going now."
I had no wish to part with her.
"Pray don't go yet. We have not been long together."
"No, not very long. But taste is refined by abstinence."
"Yes, but this sort of refinement is fretting. Your company is like that sweet wine, mentioned by a Persian poet, of which the more you drank the thirstier you became."
"Oh! here comes the gardener with my bouquet!" she cried.