"I don't care much about the book, dear. Don't let's talk of that."
"You wish I hadn't written it!"
"I wish you hadn't been so infernally bored as to think of writing it."
"And I'll bet a dollar you wish you'd come back and found me reconciled
to life and death, and reading daily texts out of little pious books,
and knitting mufflers for sailors, instead of seething with all sorts of
untimely devilishnesses. Don't you, Billy?"
What Billy thought he would not tell himself, and he said with an
extreme honesty,--
"You're the greatest old girl there is, Florrie, or ever was, or ever
will be."
"Ah, well!" she sighed, and laughed a little. "I can't help wishing
there weren't so many good folks. It makes me uncommonly lonesome. For
you're good, too, Billy, you sinner, you!"
He read the gleam in her eyes, the reckless courage, the unquenched love
of life; after all, there was more youth in her still than there had
ever been in him or in a hundred like him. He laughed, and said,--
"Oh, I do delight in you!"