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"
"And you love Philistia better than Bohemia?" I asked.
She knitted her brows and looked at me puzzled.
"If you want to talk to me," she said, "you must talk straight. I've had
no more education than a tinker's dog."
She made this peculiar announcement, not defiantly, not rudely, but
appealingly, graciously. It was not a rebuke for priggishness; it was
the unpresentable statement of a fact. I apologized for a lunatic habit
of speech and paraphrased my question.
"In a word," cried Dale, coming in on my heels with an elucidation of my
periphrasis, "what de Gex is driving at is--Do you prefer respectability
to ramping round?"
She turned slowly to him. "My dear boy, when do you think I was not
respectable?"
He jumped from the sofa as if the Chow dog had bitten him.
"Good Heavens, I never meant you to take it that way!"
She laughed, stretched up a lazy arm to him, and looked at him somewhat
quizzically in the face as he kissed her finger-tips. Although I could
have boxed the silly fellow's ears, I vow he did it in a very pretty
fashion.


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