Page:The White Peacock, Lawrence, 1911.djvu/189

Rh “Cheek!” she cried, and she boxed his ears. Then “Oh, pore fing!” she said, and kissed him.

She turned round to wink at my mother and at Lettie. She found the latter sitting in the old position with Leslie, two in a chair. He was toying with her arm; holding it and stroking it.

“Isn’t it lovely?” he said, kissing the forearm, “so warm and yet so white. Io—it reminds one of Io.”

“Somebody else talking about heifers,” murmured Alice to George.

“Can you remember,” said Leslie, speaking low, “that man in Merimée who wanted to bite his wife and taste her blood?”

“I do,” said Lettie. “Have you a strain of wild beast too?”

“Perhaps,” he laughed, “I wish these folks had gone. Your hair is all loose in your neck—it looks lovely like that though——”

Alice, the mocker, had unbuttoned the cuff of the thick wrist that lay idly on her knee, and had pushed his sleeve a little way.

“Ah!” she said. “What a pretty arm, brown as an overbaked loaf!”

He watched her smiling.

“Hard as a brick,” she added.

“Do you like it?” he drawled.

“No,” she said emphatically, in a tone that meant “yes.” “It makes me feel shivery.” He smiled again.

She superposed her tiny pale, flower-like hands on his.

He lay back looking at them curiously.