Page:Lady Barbarity; a romance (IA ladybarbarityrom00snai).pdf/229

 "Understand me, sir," says I, severely. "If I am ever at all tender to a person, I become very much his friend and delight to serve him. Now I can best serve you by denying you this key. And while we are on this argument I should be glad to ask you whether there is anything you owe me?"

"My life," he answered, promptly.

"Very well," says I; "and are you to be so thankless as to throw away that which I have given you?"

"Oh well," says he, nervously, and dropped the boldness of his look, "if that is how you put it—but, madam, for the world I would not have your name imperilled or your father's. Why, 'tis gratitude that makes me so contumacious in this matter."

"Now," says I, "here's something I should like you to reflect upon. I refuse most absolutely to yield up your person to the State. And should you do this of your own accord I will not forgive you for it; no, sir, I will not! And I will not even go to Tyburn to see how prettily you hang. And my vanity will sicken horribly. For in every enterprise I crave to be victorious, and I support a whipping as badly as you do a thoroughly polite behaviour."

"But the paper going south," he put in, doggedly.

"Yes, I've thought of that, and it hath occurred to me that if your prayers, Emblem's wit, and my