Part 13 (2/2)
”Then alter it, and call me----”
”Teddy? I think I like that best; and perhaps I shall have it all to myself.”
”I am afraid not,” laughing. ”All the fellows in the regiment christened me 'Teddy' before I had been in a week.”
”Did they? Well, never mind; it only shows what good taste they had.
The name just suits you, you are so fair and young, and handsome,” says Molly, patting his cheek with considerable condescension. ”Now, one thing more before we go in to receive our scolding: you are not to make love to me again--not even to mention the word--until a whole week has pa.s.sed: promise.”
”I could not.”
”You must.”
”Well, then, it will be a pie-crust promise.”
”No, I forbid you to break it. I can endure a little of it now and again,” says Molly, with intense seriousness, ”but to be made love to always, every day, would kill me.”
CHAPTER VII.
”Then they sat down and talked Of their friends at home ...
And related the wondrous adventure.”
--_Courts.h.i.+p of Miles Standish._
”Do exert yourself,” says Molly. ”I never saw any one so lazy. You don't pick one to my ten.”
”I can't see how you make that out,” says her companion in an injured tone. ”For the last three minutes you have sat with your hands in your lap arguing about what you don't understand in the least, while I have been conscientiously slaving; and before that you ate two for every one you put in the basket.”
”I never heard any one talk so much as you do, when once fairly started,” says Molly. ”Here, open your mouth until I put in this strawberry; perhaps it will stop you.”
”And I find it impossible to do anything with this umbrella,” says Luttrell, still ungrateful, eying with much distaste the ancient article he holds aloft: ”it is abominably in the way. I wouldn't mind if you wanted it, but you cannot with that gigantic hat you are wearing. May I put it down?”
”Certainly not, unless you wish me to have a sun-stroke. Do you?”
”No, but I really think----”
”Don't think,” says Molly: ”it is too fatiguing; and if you get used up now, I don't see what Let.i.tia will do for her jam.”
”Why do people make jam?” asks Luttrell, despairingly; ”they wouldn't if they had the picking of it: and n.o.body ever eats it, do they?”
”Yes, I do. I love it. Let that thought cheer you on to victory. Oh!
here is another fat one, such a monster. Open your mouth again, wide, and you shall have it, because you really do begin to look weak.”
They are sitting on the strawberry bank, close together, with a small square basket between them, and the pretty red and white fruit hanging from its dainty stalks all round them.
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