Page:Anthony Hope - The Dolly Dialogues.djvu/35

 'I am offering a veiled apology,' said I.

'Stuff!' said she. 'You know you told Dolly Foster that I should make an excellent wife for a trainer.'

Oh, these women! A man had better talk to a phonograph.

'Or anybody else,' said I politely.

Miss Phaeton whipped up her horses.

'Look out! There's the mounted policeman,' I cried.

'No, he isn't. Are you afraid?" [sic] she retorted.

'I'm not fit to die,' I pleaded.

'I don't care a pin for your opinion, you know,' she continued (I had never supposed that she did); 'but what did you mean by it?'

'I never said it.'

'Oh!' 'All right—I never did.'

'Then Dolly invented it?'

'Of course,' said I steadily.

'On your honour?'

'Oh, come, Miss Phaeton!'

'Would—would other people think so?' she asked, with a highly surprising touch of timidity.

'Nobody would,' I said. 'Only a snarling old wretch would say so, just because he thought it smart.'

There was a long pause. Then Miss Phaeton asked me abruptly,—

'You never met him, did you?'

'No.'

A pause ensued. We passed the Duchess again, and scratched the nose of her poodle,