Part 11 (1/2)
”Oh, yes,” he answered, indifferently. ”I can sit up straight as an arrow, but I find this att.i.tude most agreeable.”
”If you knew how you looked,” said Kate.
”How do I look?” asked the young man, playfully.
”Oh! you look--you look more like a country clod-hopper than any thing else.”
There was a sharpness in Kate's tones that fell unpleasantly on the ears of the young man.
”Do I, indeed!” was his rather cold remark. Yet he did not change his position.
”Indeed, you do,” said the wife, who was, by this time, beginning to feel a good deal of irritation; for she saw that Frederick was not inclined to respond in the way she had hoped, to her very reasonable desire that he would a.s.sume a more graceful att.i.tude. ”The fact is,”
she continued, impelled to further utterance by the excited state of her feelings, although she was conscious of having already said more than was agreeable to her husband, ”you ought to correct yourself of these ungraceful and undignified habits. It shows a want of”--
Kate stopped suddenly. She felt that she was about using words that would inevitably give offence.
”A want of what?” inquired Lee, in a low, firm voice, while he continued to look his young wife steadily in the face.
Kate's eyes fell to the floor and she remained silent.
”Ungraceful and undignified. Humph!”
Lee was evidently hurt at this allegation, as the tone in which he repeated the words clearly showed.
”Do you call your present att.i.tude graceful?” Kate asked, rallying herself under the reflection that she was right.
”It is comfortable for me; and, therefore, ought to be graceful in your eyes,” was the young man's perverse answer. Not the slightest change had yet taken place in his position.
This was beyond what the high spirited lady could bear, and she retorted with more feeling than discretion:
”Love is not blind in my case, I can a.s.sure you, Frederick, and never will be. You are very ungraceful and untidy, and annoy me, sometimes, excessively. I wish you would try to correct these things.”
”You do?”
There was something cool and provoking in the way Lee said this.
”I do, Frederick, and I'm in earnest.”
The cheeks of Kate were in a glow, and her eyes lit up, and her lips quivering.
”How long since you made the discovery that I was only a country clod-hopper?” said Lee, who was particularly annoyed by Kate's unexpected charges against his good-breeding.
”I didn't say you were only a country clod-hopper,” replied Kate.
”I believe you used the words. My ears rarely deceive me. I must own to feeling highly complimented.”
”Do sit up straight, Frederick! Do take your leg from over the arm of that chair! You make me so nervous that I can hardly contain myself.”
”Really! I thought a man was privileged to sit in any position he pleased in his own house.”
The excitement of Kate's mind had, by this time, reached a crisis.