A HUMAN HORTICULTURIST.
"Here is Sir Thomas," said Lady Harrison, rising a little nervously from
the chair by Daisy's in the dining-room, as she saw through the window,
the long black car glide up the drive; "now, I think you'll do very
well, dearie. Just follow Jean's instructions when you're bringing the
things into the dining-room. You'll have to wait on the table to-night,
you see, since Alice has left us."
"Dinna fash yersel, lassie," said Jean, as she filled the
soup-tureen--watching Daisy with some amusement as the latter, anxious
to please her mistress--the first disinterestedly kind person she had
met in this bumping, jostling, crowding, yet delightful city of her
great adventure--kept tiptoeing over to the swinging door, pushing it
cautiously a bit open, and peering through into the dining-room; "ye
needna keek through the crack o' the door. I can tell by the voices when
they're set doon. There--listen!"
Voices that had been mixed and muffled in the distant drawing-room
swelled into sudden distinctness, as a door opened. The creak of boots
dried by the sun of the street was smothered in soft carpeting as the
tide of footfalls flowed about the island table in the big dining-room.
A chair squeaked with the weight of a heavy figure sitting down. The
feet shuffled to silence. A silk kerchief whistled out of a pocket, and
a nose blew like the six o'clock siren of a flour-mill.
"There, then, new gel," said Alice, coming into the room at the moment
with her hat pinned on, exhaling the cologne of her recent titivation;
"look sharp now. Serve the soup while 'e's a-blowin 'is nose. 'E'll
'oller like a wild bull if it ain't on the table the minit 'e gets 'is
face clear o' his 'andkeher. Precious little excuse 'e needs to mieke an
upraw, 'e down't."
Hastened by this exhortation from one who evidently knew whereof she
spoke, Daisy, her color risen to a fine bloom in her excitement, passed
through the swinging door which Jean, flattened back out of sight, held
open for her, and bore to the side-table the tray with the covered
soup-tureen and warm plates.
"Hey--bounce along here, English." Harrison, whose back was toward her,
crammed his silk handkerchief, after a persistent habit of his earlier
coatless and manual days, into his hip-pocket, and spoke as to Alice;
"what do we pay you for?"
Daisy felt every nerve in her body recoil aggressively at his tone; but,
in response to a rather helpless glance from the big woman sitting
awkwardly at the other end of the table, she came over rapidly with the
soup-dish.
There was a certain habitual jerk around and quelling stare upward--his
"pur-rsonal power" must be kept active--which Sir Thomas always
delivered when the maid reached his chair. Alice, who had been a maid of
many employers, whose eccentricities she had made a point of humoring,
had early noted this gesture of Harrison's, and had always made a point
of pausing two or three feet away until the observance was over, to
avoid possibility of accident to the dish she bore. But Daisy, hurrying
to the table, was caught unprepared, right at Harrison's side. His
jerking shoulder hit the bottom of the soup-tureen. It fell, and with it
a Niagara of hot soup poured down Sir Thomas' arm and shoulder and into
his lap. This happened before he had time to follow the twist around
with the usual glare upward.
A delightful feeling of unloosed anger flowed over the contractor. Here
at least was an excuse to "call down" the wary Alice. Sweeping the
greasy surplus from vest and trousers with a scrape or two of the side
of his napkin, Harrison gathered up his blue jowl, narrowed his eyes,
knitted his forehead, and wrenched his head around to bellow. Then he
saw, not the white-lashed, thin-nosed Alice, but Daisy, flushing and
dimpling irrepressibly as she bent to pick up the soup-tureen.
What Harrison had intended to say was something like this: "Blast your
sun-kissed English hide, you'll pay for this mess. An' then I'll fire
you ..." etc., etc.--making each sentence hurt as much as possible,
according to his knowledge of Alice's sensibilities.
What Sir Thomas Harrison actually did say, after a brief stare at the
new maid, was this: "Pretty good for a start-off, little one. Pret-ty
good!"
And Daisy, kneeling over the upturned dish, her face below the edge of
the table and invisible from the lady and the guest, tipped her head a
little to one side and twinkled up at her employer out of the corner of
her eye. His face changed ever so little--just a slight lowering of the
eyelids and a quiver outward of the thick lower lip--but enough to let
Daisy know that she would have no more trouble with Sir Thomas Harrison
except that peculiar kind of trouble she knew well how to deal
with--that kind of trouble which made life, for pretty and piquant Daisy
Nixon, a continuous chain of daring adventures.
* * * * *
Sir William Ware was a stroller, with hands in pockets, on the veranda
of the world. It is true that he was a bank president; but the
position, even more honorary than bank presidencies usually are, gave
him as little work or concern as his several other business connections
of the same kind. Agents did the worrying; Sir William merely spent the
money, or as much of it as a bachelor of quiet tastes required. A large
unused portion of his income was reinvested each year. The principal
thus grew instead of shrank; and Sir William, as he put it, had long ago
"quite given up hope of ever being able to die a pauper."
Sir William had a large library, but seldom read books. He reserved his
seats seasonally at the theatre, but seldom attended shows. Life itself
was the novel he read and the drama he watched. A man who has those two
things most people want most--money, and social prestige and power--and
has remained so far unspoiled by having them, that he knows keenly and
wisely wherein they are valuable and wherein worthless: such a man is
apt to develop a humorous contempt for the book and drama as
interpreters of life, when he compares chapter or act with his
experience of the real thing.
Ware had the highest social status, both by birth--which counts for
little in the West--and by innate qualification, which counts everywhere
in desirable circles. A patrician, innately so in the sense of being a
gentleman as well as a thoroughbred, is seldom spoiled by being born
wealthy. Sir William, who had enjoyed but never either misused or
wasted his money; and who, welcomed in any social circle, was yet a
friend of man everywhere, would have liked, if it had been possible, to
have helped everybody to enjoyment of the same things he enjoyed. He
wanted to see everybody with "a guinea he could spend." He wanted to see
everybody a friend to everybody else.
Although the women, both young and old, in the circles where Ware moved
had demonstrated to themselves, by trying every rivet in his celibate
harness, that as far as they were concerned he was an immovable,
immutable and foreordained bachelor, it was an odd fact that he had
never in his own mind given up either the intention or the hope that
there would some day be a Lady Ware--the kind he wanted.
These were a few of the qualities the future Lady Ware must have:
Physically, she must be perfect, and of vigorous health. She must have
an instinctive sophistication: an innocent girl would be flavorless. She
must be frank, but not rude. She must be perennially alive and merry.
She must, above all, be new material--that is, young enough not to be
hardened against impress.
In his quest for a wife--or rather, in his unsuspected but ever-present
matrimonial vigilance--Sir William had followed a course exactly
opposite to the usual one. That is to say, instead of seeking out some
woman or maiden of his circle who seemed outwardly qualified, and then
analyzing her under the microscope of a long and intimate acquaintance,
he first thought up the qualities he wished his future wife to possess,
and then synthesized them into an imaginary Eve who abode always in his
brain and was the pattern, vague, perhaps, as to actual form and
feature, but palpable enough in all essentials, of the female Sir
William Ware proposed to discover and marry.
When he found her, there would be no "shilly-shallying." There never had
been, when a Ware found anything he particularly wanted. He would marry
her "straightaway." Sir William could conceive of no obstacle. The
chance that Fate would play him the trick of showing him his ideal in
another man's wife was, he decided, too remote to be considered.
* * * * *
Some two hours after Daisy's appearance in the Harrison dining-room,
Jean the Scotch cook, drinking tea with Daisy in the kitchen, reached
out and opened the door in answer to a knock like a steam-hammer. In the
doorway stood a small, shrewd-faced, grinning boy.
"Some guy out under them trees at the gate," he said, "wants 'a have a
word', as he calls it, wit' that jane," indicating Daisy with a jerk of
his head.
"And how d'ye ken he didna mean me?" Jean enquired, drawing in her chin
and making a mouth at the messenger.
"Cos he said a 'young, good-lookin' one'," replied the youth,
ingenuously; evading adroitly, however, Jean's muscular red hand as it
swung in his direction.
"Sauce-box! Ye'll just keep the len'th o' my arm away, if ye're canny,
after a rap like that. Skedaddle!"
The courier skedaddled. Jean closed the door and returned to the cosy
table, with its cake-plate, tea-pot under cosy, cups and saucers, and
sugar-dish. Daisy stood up before the looking-glass and gave her hair a
little poke with her forefinger and thumb.
"Sit ye doon, lassie," Jean advised, as she stirred her tea, "let the
mon come awa in, if he wants to court ye. I'm off tae my bed, richt this
minute, and ye'll have the place to yersel's."
"Oh-h, I guess 'll just go and see," Daisy's eyes sparkled with resource
and daring; "if it's somebody I know, I'll tell him to come earlier next
time, and send him off home."
"And if it's a'body ye dinna ken," Jean said, squaring a great forearm
on the table, "juist skirl. I'll bide here, with the outside door no
snibbit, an' listen for a wee, in case ye need me."
Daisy's feet made a light brisk tapping on the contractor's cement
driveway as she stepped smartly down toward the gate. Behind her, the
big house was gradually darkening to retiring-time. Before her were
great maples, with mysterious darkness between--thickening into a group
with dark undergrowth at the point where the two stone gateposts marked
the junction of driveway and street.
Three persons were in Daisy's mind. First, Beatty--although how he had
found out her whereabouts was a puzzle. Second, old Jim Hogle of the
Imperial Hotel--for the sylph, whose impulse of meanness Daisy had
estimated as strong enough to over-balance self-consideration any day,
might easily have played her false and told Hogle where she was. Third,
the chauffeur of the jitney, perhaps come back, on the excuse of calling
for his fare, to ask her to go out for a "car-ride."
Daisy found herself, in fact, hoping that the tarrier under the trees
might be one of the three, although her reason for wanting to see each
was different. She hoped it was Beatty, for his taking the trouble to
trace her would show that he cared, which it would be a satisfaction to
know. She hoped it was old Hogle, in order that she might have the
chance to tell him, "plump and plain" and finally, that she was quite
capable of looking after herself, and to mind his own business. She
hoped it might be the chauffeur, because there had been something about
that curly head and humorous eye, as well as in his friendly warning
about entering the Harrison house "the back way", that suggested he
might develop on acquaintance into very good "company." To Daisy, men
were of only two classes--those who were "forward" and "had fun in
them," and those who were backward and hadn't. She preferred "forward"
to "backward" men: first, because curbing a man was "more sport" to a
girl of Daisy's merry intrepidity than having to encourage him; and
secondly, because backward men usually "went crazy" when once you got
them started, and could not be handled at all.
She was therefore a little surprised and puzzled, but agreeably so--for
the new was always agreeable to Daisy, who had been from her cradle
shaped for adventure--when there stepped out from under the foliage a
tall, gentlemanly man with a cane, who lifted his hat and said "Good
evening"--not awkwardly but with a certain smooth ease. His face and
hers were in the shadow of the gatepost; but there seemed something
faintly familiar about his voice.
"Shall we go out where it's light, and take a look at each other?" he
said.
Daisy, withholding speech--she had found out by experience that it was
a good rule to let the other, when a stranger, do all the talking for
the first few moments--let her companion precede her through the gate.
In the full light of the street-lamp he stopped, turned, rested his cane
on the pavement, and looked down at her as she came out from behind the
big stone post. Daisy, with a heightening of her surprise, yet with a
certain familiar thrill she could not quite explain, looked up into the
pleasant eyes of Harrison's guest.
She saw a man whose appearance, in every last detail, mutely vocalized
that elusive and often misapplied term "gentleman"--his quiet clothes,
worn unconsciously as an outward cuticle; not a muscle at constraint,
either in his clean-cut friendly face or his easily-standing
figure--because self had been wholly forgotten and his interest, by the
polite habit of years of breeding, transferred spontaneously and with
pleasant solicitude to his companion. His hair, in which a hue of gray
showed, was cut sensibly and short. Although hair and skin proclaimed
him an elderly man, there was about him a general air of frankness, of
enthusiasm, of almost boyish eagerness, that made Daisy "take to" him in
a companionable sense, at once.
Ware, on his part, saw a girl, bright and dimpling, perusing him with
eyes that coruscated with sophistication and wariness--armed cap-a-pie
in every virile nerve and muscle--not a bit timorous, but flashingly on
guard, with every faculty at its sentry-post. He saw a girl whose lashes
twinkled irrepressibly, and whose lips had to be pressed hard against
the smile-impulse. He saw a girl, whose regal color and roundness and
poise, and clear eyes and skin were a proclamation of health and vigor
that he who ran might read. He saw a girl whom many little uncouthnesses
of manner and attire showed "green" and undeveloped--in short,
susceptible of tillage as a bit of wild but fertile garden-ground.
"I'm going to marry you, you know," he said, quietly, with no more
preface than the friendliest of all smiles.
There! It was out--said as Sir William had long ago decided he would say
it--without preamble, smoothly, quietly, as though it were a thing that
had been arranged ages ago, and he were simply reminding her of it.
Ware watched the girl's face with keen curiosity--his glance steady, but
so pleasant withal, that Daisy did not find it disconcerting. The girl
looked back at him--her face first shortening and dimpling to a
half-smile; then lengthening to sobriety; then gathering and dimpling
again, and remaining so, because that was Daisy Nixon's natural
expression. Daisy knew nothing about hypnotic suggestion. All she knew
was that she seemed surrounded by some queer influence. She seemed--to
put it the way it presented itself to her--as though she had stepped
into a book or a moving-picture or a dream.
Sir William stepped to her side, crooked his arm, drew hers through it.
"Shall we have a cup of coffee, somewhere?" he said; adding in droll
answer to his own invitation, "Yes, we shall, shan't we, my dear?"
Daisy, feeling as though she had temporarily become twins--one twin
going along quite naturally and unquestioningly by this queer stranger's
side, and the other, agog with merry curiosity, following along to see
how the adventure was going to turn out--was conscious of a short walk
under the city's arc-lights, an entry into a cafe on the ground floor of
a great and handsome apartment-block, a side-turn into a curtained
alcove, and a half involuntary sitting-down into a chair pushed adroitly
behind her by a waiter in full dress and with an uncanny plaster-cast
face. A table, with linen, shining silver, and cut-glass was between the
quiescent twin of her queer dual self and her companion. The other twin
of her, seemed to stand a bit aside, twinkling and vigilant.
Sir William, without looking at the menu the waiter held before him,
gave a brisk order. As the attendant moved smoothly and quickly away,
Ware filled two of the shining glasses in the centre of the table with
ice-water, clinked them together, and passed one to Daisy.
"To Lady Ware," he said, gravely and pleasantly, as he drank. Daisy--at
least that twin half of her who companioned the baronet at the
table--seemed to know exactly what to do. She lifted her glass and
sipped, tipping her little-finger up. Then her two halves merged into
one a moment, and the whole Daisy said:
"Who's Lady Ware?"
Her companion, whose name she did not yet know, looked across at her
with a kind of pondering exaltation--a deep but self-contained joy.
"She's one who has been a long time arriving," he said, "a long, long
time, my dear. But she's here at last."
"You're an Englishman, aren't you?" Daisy plumped, naively.
"Guilty, on all counts," Sir William smiled, "but I think we shall
manage to live that down, shan't we. I'm sure we can do so, if we both
try hard, and try together."
"Well--Englishmen are gentlemen, anyway," Daisy conceded, drinking some
more water. "I'd trust myself anywhere with an Englishman."
"Do you know, now," Sir William reached out a strong white hand and put
it over hers, looking right at her in a pleased and virile way, "I am
infinitely rejoiced to hear you say that--infinitely rejoiced. The way
you said it, too! My word!"
His air, though Daisy at the moment could not see it that way, was the
air of a man who has acquired a new pet; and, planning to train it, is
surprised to find that it knows some tricks already.
"What's your name?" said Daisy.
Sir William felt ready to hug himself every time this conjugal find of
his spoke. He could have danced every time she changed expression.
Absolutely novel! New clay to the potter's hand!
"I am called Ware," he said, "so," Sir William had a momentary lapse,
common both to more and to less intelligent men than he, "you will have
to learn to be-Ware, you see."
The waiter of the plaster-cast face, holding on high a tray which he
brought down with a deft flourish to the level of the table, slipped in
like a whisper. There was a noiseless flicker of fingers and napery and
silver--and he had vanished through the curtains again. There was left a
neatly-laid table, on which Daisy saw a silver dish containing oranges,
bananas, grapes and new luscious dates; a plate of cake cut thin; a
coffee-pot steaming aromatically; and a side-dish with toothsome little
cubes of cheese.
Ware, watching with a delight that increased each moment, saw Daisy,
with a womanly and homelike little motion, reach out quite as a matter
of course, pull the coffee-pot toward her, set the two cups in their
saucers, with spoons beside, and look around for the cream.
"Cafe noir," said Sir William; "let's try it black, this time. If you
don't like it, we'll have in some cream."
Daisy Nixon filled the cups, passed one to her companion, and, gingerly
lifting to her lips the one she had retained, tasted it.
"Ugh! it's like medicine," she said; "tell the man to bring some
cre-eam, quick."
Sir William Ware was so elated at the smooth and rapid development of
his unique mating experiment that he could have shouted with glee. It
was barely twenty-five minutes since he had first linked arms with this
tip-top bit of girlhood and led her in out of the street. Now she was
passing his coffee unprompted. Next, ordering him to have in the cream.
If domestic relations continued to grow in this splendid, almost
spontaneous manner, she would be jolly well ready for the marriage
ceremony, almost, by the time this bit of a supper was over. And, if
_she_ was ready, Jove! he would be, too. It was magic, it was ripping,
the way in which his synthesized connubial Galatea had taken upon
herself the bloom and body of life! The baronet sat back, his napkin on
his knee, contemplating Daisy with an enjoyment more keen than any
sensation he could remember in all the conscious years of his
half-century and more.
"Shall you like to be Lady Ware?" he said, almost deferentially.
Daisy took a date-stone from her red lips, laid it on the side of her
saucer, and leaned forward, knuckles under chin, dimples dancing in and
out, eyes flashing with a kind of bright shrewdness.
"I don't know," she said; letting her lashes fall slowly, and putting
her head a little on one side.
"I say--stop it!" observed Sir William, so briskly that Daisy sat bolt
upright, sobered for a moment; "don't do that, you know--don't flirt,
please. I'm not joking. Did you think I was joking, really?"
"Joking about what?" said Daisy, in her direct way; but her eyes
twinkled.
"You know jolly well what, you tantalizing little beggar," said Sir
William. "Now, do be sensible. Pour me out a drop more coffee, won't
you?"
Daisy's round arm and elbow tipped up piquantly as she filled the
proffered cup.
"I say, I do like to see you pour coffee, you know," Ware's eyes shone
like a boy's as he leaned over and, for the second time that evening,
covered her hand with his. "Now, tell me, won't you, what you think
about our--our plan, as it were?"
The hand on hers was strong and cool and steady as a rock. Something
about the fine clean touch of it caused coquettishness to fall from
Daisy like a flimsy wrap cast aside. She looked at her companion with
brown eyes into which there had come a high shining of frankness and
trust. The baronet received the honest beaming of that look, in which
Daisy's self spoke, with a sense of satisfaction almost solemn in its
profundity.
Daisy cleared her throat a little--a habit she had when about to speak
seriously. Then utterance came, in the simple and plain provincialism of
the western farm country.
"You seem to be in earnest about this marrying idea; and I'd trust you
anywhere," she began; then paused, pondering, her free hand propped
beneath her chin.
"I say, that's very jolly of you, you know," Sir William patted the hand
under his.
"I'd trust you anywhere," Daisy went on, "and there isn't any reason, I
guess, why I shouldn't marry you. I'm not promised to anybody else, and
I like all the boys the same--just as friends. I suppose you're a pretty
rich man, and I'd have a lovely home; and you're so polite and
gentlemanly, you'd be an easy husband to get along with. But--but when
a person marries," Daisy hesitated, a dash of color coming into her
cheeks; then, putting up her chin, went on resolutely, "they have
to--have to--oh, I can't put it in any fancy way, because I don't know
how--they have to start right away raising kids. So that's why I don't
want to marry just yet. That's why I just couldn't get married, the way
I feel now, unless it was to someone I loved so much I couldn't help
it."
Daisy Nixon paused, her face hot. An odd feeling--as though she would
like to recall what she had just "come out with"--possessed her for a
moment. Never before, in all her battling and aggressive seventeen
years, had she, as it were, let down her guard and talked so frankly and
freely. But frankness awakens frankness; and this fine-looking stranger,
with his straightforward and pleasant manner, had drawn her out in spite
of herself.
Sir William did not speak for a little while. There was a glow in his
eyes, as he regarded her, that might have been the index of any one of
several emotions.
"I hope you're not mad (angry)," Daisy seized the interpretation nearest
at hand of Sir William's expression. "You needn't be, because if I ever
do fall in love, I don't think it will be with a young fellow anyway.
Boys are pretty near all alike--you go out with them a couple of times,
and you know all about them. They're all right to play with--but when a
girl really falls in love, it's with a man, not a boy. That's the way
it'll he with me, unless I find a boy-man, and they're as scarce as
hens' teeth."
Sir William looked at her so long after she had stopped speaking, that
Daisy's face, never very long at rest, changed from gravity back to its
customary dimpling.
"You'll be sure to know me, anyway, next time you see me, eh?" she said,
putting her head on one side.
Ware, still holding her hand, stood up. The napkin slid off his knee to
the floor. Daisy, obeying a tidy feminine impulse, stooped over and with
her free hand picked the doyley up and laid it on the table. Then she
stood erect and bright, facing the baronet at about the level of his
chin.
"Little woman," he said, his eyes shining down into hers, "you are jolly
well right when you say I shan't forget you; and I want you to believe
that I don't intend to forget you--in fact, haven't the slightest
intention of forgetting you, or even trying to. Shall you keep on, do
you think, in your present position?"
"I guess so," said Daisy, "I like the lady of the house."
"Very fine woman," said Sir William, "very fine, indeed.... Now, I
shan't keep you out any longer, as it must be getting late." He
relinquished her hand, with a little pat, and reached down his hat and
cane.
Sir William walked back with Daisy as far as the Harrison gate. On the
way, he said, squeezing the hand that lay within his arm, where he had
drawn it as on the previous walk in the opposite direction, "now, you'll
keep on being a straightforward and good little woman, won't you? You
won't let the city spoil you, I mean--it has a tendency that way, you
know."
Daisy smiled up. "Oh, I guess I can take care of myself," she said,
"I've had to, all my life." Her companion chuckled at this.
"Might I enquire as to the duration of that immense period of time?" he
said.
"You mean, how old am I?" Daisy paused, as they reached the gate, and
gently freed her arm. It was as well, she had found in the case of most
previous escorts, to be cleared for rapid retreat when the good-bye
moment came. It might be as well, in this case too. Men were queer, at
the good-bye moment.
"That's it," Sir William said, in reply to her paraphrase of his
previous enquiry. He leaned on his cane, as only an Englishman can lean
on a cane--almost as though it were a part of him--and, just as she was
about to reply, interjected, "wait a bit, though. I believe I should
like to have a guess at your age before you tell me. Jolly fun,
guessing. Nineteen?"
"Seventeen," said Daisy.
"Dear me!" Ware brought his cane around, stood it before him, and
crossed his hands on it. "Shockingly bad guessing. However, I am pleased
more than I can say to know that so wise and mature a little woman is
only seventeen--the sweetest age of maidenhood. And your name--do you
realize we've spent a whole hour or more together, in the most intimate
way, and I don't even know your name? If I were to guess at that, I
should say 'Daffodil'. You dance so, if you know what I mean."
"Well," she said, "you're not so very far off it. It's Daisy."
"Bravo!" Sir William struck his cane delightedly on the pavement; "I
knew--that is, I almost knew--it would be a blossom of some sort. Well,
little Daisy of the West," he hooked his cane on his arm, removed his
hat, and stepped forward: while Daisy, though tensed into bright
vigilance against any momentary irresponsibility of the heady good-bye
time, dimpled up in a mischievously tempting way, "you won't forget what
we've been talking about--shall you?"
If these words, uttered softly as they were, had been followed by an
attempt to take her hand, Daisy would have drawn away. But there was no
such movement. Sir William, although he had transferred his hat to the
arm that held the cane, merely thrust his free hand into the side-pocket
of his coat.
Daisy deepened her smile and raised her face a little more, until the
light of the street-lamp was reflected in tiny elfin sparklets in each
of her eyes. Her lips drew to red fulness, then parted a little. Her
cheeks gathered piquantly. After a moment, her lashes fell and a little
hand, with irrepressibly coquettish purpose, wandered out from behind
her, felt its way up to the brooch at the breast of her blouse, paused
there, then was extended toward Sir William.
The baronet's hand came out of his pocket. It did not meet hers,
however. It went up before him, palm outward. He smiled at her over the
tips of the fingers in a queer, distant way.
"My dear," he said (and his words were a puzzle to Daisy), "if you were
less the woman, I should perhaps like you less. But don't let the thing
overpower you."
With this, Sir William Ware set his hat on his head, swung his cane, and
flicked a bit of pebble off the pavement.
"Au revoir, little woman," he said, still ignoring the hand she had
extended toward him. With this, and raising his hat quietly, he turned
and walked away.
Daisy, letting the unreceived hand hang before her, held out and
humorously pendent, looked after her vanishing escort contemplatively.
"Hmf!" she said, "no date, no nothing. Oh, well--he'll be back, if," she
flushed a little, "if he wasn't fooling. I don't care, anyway."