“She is the most graceless hussy imaginable,” I cried. “There was he grinding his heart out for her, and just because a more brazen-throated scoundrel came upon the scene she must needs leave our poor friend in the lurch. She has no more heart than my boot, and she will come to a bad end.”
“But he was such a fool,” retorted my sage damsel, with a flash of laughter in her dark eyes. “If he wanted her, why didn’t he go up and take her?”
“Because he is a gentleman, a cicada of fine and delicate feeling.”
“Hou!” laughed Carlotta. “He was a fool. It served him right. She grew tired of waiting.”
“You believe, then,” said I, “in marriage by capture?”
I explained and discoursed to her of the matrimonial habits of the Tartar tribes.
“Yes,” said Carlotta. “That is sense. And it must be such fun for the girl. All that, what you call it?—wooing?—is waste of time. I like things to happen, quick, quick, one after the other—or else—”
“Or else what?”
“To do nothing, nothing but lie in the sun, like this afternoon.”
“Yes,” said I dreamily, after I had again thrown myself by her side. “Like this afternoon.”