Page:The Reverberator (2nd edition, American issue, London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1888).djvu/19

Rh "All right: I'll give her all I have." And Miss Dosson's interlocutor leaned back in his chair with folded arms, as if to let his companion know that she would have to count with his patience. But she sat there in her expressionless placidity, giving no sign of alarm or defeat. He was the first indeed to show a symptom of restlessness: at the end of a few moments he asked the young lady if she didn't suppose her father had told her sister who it was.

"Do you think that's all that's required?" Miss Dosson demanded. But she added, more graciously—"Probably that's the reason. She's so shy."

"Oh, yes—she used to look it."

"No, that's her peculiarity, that she never looks it, and yet she is intensely so."

"Well, you make it up for her then, Miss Delia," the young man ventured to declare.

"No, for her, I'm not shy—not in the least."

"If it wasn't for you I think I could do something," the young man went on.

"Well, you've got to kill me first!"

"I'll come down on you, somehow, in the Reverberator," said George Flack.

"Oh, that's not what the people want."

"No, unfortunately they don't care anything about my affairs."

"Well, we do: we are kinder, Francie and I,"