ok the responsibility on himself of saying with deep-seated
intuition:--"I know precisely what you mean. You're perfectly right.
Perfectly!"

"A hundred little things," said the lady. The dragging in of ninety-nine
of these, with the transparent object of slurring over the hundredth,
which each knew the other was thinking of, merely added to its
vividness. Aunt Constance might just as well have let it alone, and
suddenly talked of something else. For instance, of the Sun God's
abnormal radiance, now eloquent of what he meant to do for the
metropolis when he got a few degrees lower, and went in for setting, in
earnest. Or if she shrank from that, as not prosaic enough to dilute the
conversation down to mere chat-point, the Ethiopian Serenaders who had
just begun to be inexplicable in the Square below. But she left the
first to assert its claim to authorship of the flush of rose colour that
certainly made her tell to advantage, and the last to account for the
animation which helped it. For the enigmatic character of South Carolina
never interferes with a certain brisk exhilaration in its bones. She
repeated in a vague way:--"A hundred things!" and shut her lips on
particularisation.

"I don't know exactly how many," said Mr. Pellew gravely. He sat drawing
one whisker through the hand whose elbow was on the sofa-back, with his
eyes very much on the flush and the animation. "I was thinking of one in
particular."

"Perhaps _I_ was. I don't know."

"I was thinking of the kissin'."

"Well--so was I, perhaps. I don't see any use in mincing matters." She
had been the mincer-in-chief, however.

"Don't do the slightest good! When it gets to kissin'-point, it's all
up. If I had been a lady, and broken a fillah off, I think I should have
been rather grateful to him for getting out of the gangway. Should have
made a point of getting out, myself."

The subject had got comfortably landed, and could be philosophically
discussed. "I dare say everyone does not feel the point as strongly as I
do," said Miss Dickenson. "I know my sister Georgie--Mrs. Amphlett
Starfax--looks at it quite differently, and thinks me rather a ... prig.
Or perhaps _prig_ isn't exactly the word. I don't know how to put
it...."

"Never mind. I know exactly what you mean."

"You see, the circumstances are so different. Georgie had been engaged
six times before Octavius came on the scene. But, oh dear, how I _am_
telling tales out of school!..."

"Never