"Fits!" she cried in frowning amaze.
"Seizures, then----"
""Twas no seizure, sir--"twas yourself!"
"Me?" he exclaimed, staring.
"You--and your abominable tobacco-pipe!" Here she shivered daintily.
"Alack, madam, see, "tis broke!"
"Heaven be thanked, sir."
""Twas an admirable pipe--an old friend," he murmured.
"O fie, sir--only chairmen and watchmen and worse, drink smoke. "Tis a low habit, vicious, vain and vulgar."
"Is it so indeed, madam?"
"It is! Aunt Belinda says so and I think so. If you must have vices why not snuff?"
"But I hate snuff!"
"But "tis so elegant! There"s Sir Jasper Denholm takes it with such an air I vow "tis perfectly ravishing! And Sir Benjamin Tripp and Viscount Merivale in especial--such grace! Such an elegant turn of the wrist! But to suck a pipe--O Gemini!"
"I"m sorry my pipe offends you!" said he, glancing at her glowing loveliness.
And here, because of her beauty and nearness he grew silent and finding he yet held part of his clay pipe, broken in his hasty ascent, he fell to turning it over in his fingers, staring at it very hard but seeing it not at all; whereat she fell to studying him, his broad shoulders and powerful hands, his clean-cut aquiline features, his tender mouth and strong, square chin. Thus, the Major, glancing up suddenly, eye met eye and for a long moment they looked on one another, then, as she turned away he saw her cheek crimson suddenly and she, aware of this, clenched her white fists and flushed all the deeper.
""Tis abominable rude to--stare so!" she said, over her shoulder.
"You are the Lady Elizabeth Carlyon, I think?" he enquired.
"And then, sir?"
"Then you are well used to being stared at, methinks."
"At a distance, sir!"
Here the Major edged away a couple of inches.
"You have heard of such a person before, then?" she enquired loftily.
"I go to London--sometimes, madam, when I must and when last there I chanced to hear her acclaimed and toasted as the "Admirable Betty"!"
said he, frowning.
"I am sometimes called Betty, sir," she acknowledged.
"Also "Bewitching Bet"!" Here he scowled fiercely at a bunch of cherries.
"Do you think Bet so ill a name, sir?" she enquired, stealing a glance at him.
""Bewitching Bet"!" he repeated grimly and the hand that grasped his broken pipe became a fist, observing which she smiled slyly.
"Or is it that the "bewitching" offends you, sir?" she questioned innocently.
"Both, mam, both!" said he, scowling yet.
"La, sir," she cried gaily, "in this light and at this precise angle I do protest you look quite handsome when you frown."
The Major immediately laughed.
"If," she continued, "your chin were less grim and craggy and your nose a little different and your eyes less like gimlets and needles--if you wore a modish French wig instead of a horsehair mat and had your garments made by a London tailor instead of a country cobbler and carpenter you would be almost attractive--by candle light."
"Is my wig so unmodish?" he enquired smiling a trifle ruefully, ""tis my best."
"Unmodish?" White hands were lifted, and sparkling eyes rolled themselves in agonised protest. "There"s a new tie-wig come in--_un peu negligee_--a most truly ravishing confection. As for clothes----"
"And needles," he added, "pray what of your promise?"
"Promise, sir?"
"You were to teach me how to sew on a b.u.t.ton, I think?"
"b.u.t.ton!" she repeated, staring,
"If you"ve forgot, "tis no matter, madam," said he and dropped very nimbly from the wall.
"Ah, my forgetfulness hath angered you, sir."
"No, child, no, extreme youth is apt to be extreme thoughtless and forgetful----"
"Sir, I am twenty-two."
"And I am forty-one!" he said wistfully.
""Tis a monstrous great age, sir!"
"I begin to fear it is!" said he rather ruefully.
"And great age is apt to be peevish and slothful and childish and fretful and must be ruled. So come you over the wall this instant, sir!"
"And wherefore, madam?"
""Tis so my will!"
"But----"
"Plague take it, sir, how may I sew on your abominable b.u.t.tons with a wall betwixt us? Over with you this moment--obey!"