Part 22 (2/2)
”Whiles,” she answered, laughing. ”And are all Englishmen so shy of their virtues?”
Tony Creagh coming up at that moment, she referred the question to him.
”Sure, I can't say,” he answered unsmilingly. ”'Fraid I'm out of court.
Never knew an Englishman to have any.”
”Can't you spare them one at the least?” Aileen implored, gaily.
He looked at her, then at me, a twinkle in his merry Irish eyes.
”Ecod then, I concede them one! They're good sportsmen. They follow the game until they've bagged it.”
We two flushed in concert, but the point of her wit touched Creagh on the _riposte_.
”The men of the nation being disposed of in such cavalier fas.h.i.+on, what shall we say of the ladies, sir?” she asked demurely.
”That they are second only to the incomparable maidens of the North,” he answered, kissing her hand in his extravagant Celtic way.
”But I will not be fubbed off with your Irish blarney. The English ladies, Mr. Creagh?” she merrily demanded.
”Come, Tony, you renegade! Have I not heard you toast a score of times the beauties of London?” said I, coming up with the heavy artillery.
”Never, I vow. Sure I always thought Edinburgh a finer city--not so dirty and, pink me, a vast deal more interesting. Now London is built----”
”On the Thames. So it is,” I interrupted dryly. ”And--to get back to the subject under discussion--the pink and white beauties of London are built to take the eye and ensnare the heart of roving Irishmen. Confess!”
”Or be forever shamed as recreant knight,” cried Aileen, her blue eyes bubbling with laughter.
Tony unbuckled his sword and offered it her. ”If I yield 'tis not to numbers but to beauty. Is my confession to be in the general or the particular, Miss Macleod?”
”Oh, in the particular! 'Twill be the mair interesting.”
”Faith then, though it be high treason to say so of one lady before another, Tony Creagh's scalp dangles at the belt of the most bewitching little charmer in Christendom.”
”Her name?”
”Mistress Antoinette Westerleigh, London's reigning toast.”
Aileen clapped her hands in approving glee.
”And did you ever tell her?”
”A score of times. Faith, 'twas my rule to propose every second time I saw her and once in between.”
”And she----?”
”Laughed at me; played s.h.i.+ll-I-shall-I with my devotion; vowed she would not marry me till I had been killed in the wars to prove I was a hero; smiled on me one minute and scorned me the next.”
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