"
"The salad?"
"No. Your whispering to me."
"Blarney!"
George made no response, but checked Pendennis to a walk. Whereupon
Lucy protested quickly: "Oh, don't!"
"Why? Do you want him to trot his legs off?"
"No, but--"
"No, but'--what?"
She spoke with apparent gravity: "I know when you make him walk it's
so you can give all your attention to--to proposing to me again!"
And as she turned a face of exaggerated color to him, "By the Lord,
but you're a little witch!" George cried.
"George, do let Pendennis trot again!"
"I won't!"
She clucked to the horse. "Get up, Pendennis! Trot! Go on!
Commence!"
Pendennis paid no attention; she meant nothing to him, and George
laughed at her fondly. "You are the prettiest thing in this world,
Lucy!" he exclaimed. "When I see you in winter, in furs, with your
cheeks red, I think you're prettiest then, but when I see you in
summer, in a straw hat and a shirtwaist and a duck skirt and white
gloves and those little silver buckled slippers, and your rose-
coloured parasol, and your cheeks not red but with a kind of pinky
glow about them, then I see I must have been wrong about the winter!
When are you going to drop the 'almost' and say we're really engaged?"
"Oh, not for years! So there's the answer, and Let's trot again.
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