Page:E Nesbit - The Literary Sense.djvu/326

314 "And communicated by some means more romantic than the post?"

"It wasn't romantic. It was tennis-balls."

"Tennis-balls?"

"You cut a slit and squeeze it and put a note in, and it shuts up and no one notices it. It wasn't romantic at all. And I don't know why I should tell you anything about it."

"And then, I suppose, there were glances in church, and stolen meetings in the passionate hush of the rose-scented garden." "There's nothing in the garden but geraniums," she said, "and we always talked over the wall—he used to stand on their chicken house, and I used to turn our dog kennel up on end and stand on that. You have no right to know anything about it, but it was not in the least romantic."

"No—that sees itself! May I ask whether it was you or he who proposed this elopement?"

"Oh, how dare you!" she said, jumping up; "you have no right to insult me like this."

He caught her wrist. "Sit down, you little firebrand," he said. "I gather that he proposed it. You, at any rate, consented, no doubt after the regulation amount of proper scruples. It's