Page:The Other House (London, William Heinemann, 1896), Volume 1.djvu/210

196 "You do?" said Tony approvingly. "Well, you might go in for something worse!"

He spoke with a cheerfulness that covered all the ground; but she repeated the words as if challenging their sense. "I might 'go in'?"

Her accent struck a light from them, put in an idea that had not been Tony's own. Thus presented, the idea seemed happy, and, in his incontrollable restlessness, his face more vividly brightening, he rose to it with a zeal that brought him for a third time to his feet. He smiled ever so kindly and, before he could measure his words or his manner, broke out: "If you only really would, you know, my dear Rose!"

In a quicker flash he became aware that, as if he had dealt her a blow in the face, her eyes had filled with tears. It made the taste of his joke too bad. "Are you gracefully suggesting that I shall carry Mr. Beever off?" she demanded.

"Not from me, my dear—never!" Tony blushed and felt how much there was to rectify in some of his impulses. "I think a lot of him and I want to keep my hand on him. But I speak of him frankly, always, as a prize, and I want something awfully