"Then why on earth didn't you?" says Luttrell, reproachfully, as though he had been done out of something.
"A lingering sense of maiden modesty and a faint idea that perhaps you might not like it alone restrained me. But for that I must have given way to my feelings. Just think, if I had," says Molly, breaking into a merry laugh, "what a horrible fright I would have given you!"
"Not a horrible one, at all events. Molly," bending to examine some imaginary thing in the side of the boat, "have you never--had a--lover?"
"A lover? Oh, yes, I have had any amount of them," says Molly, with an alacrity that makes his heart sink. "I don't believe I could count my adorers: it quite puzzles me to know where to begin. There were the curates,--our rector is not sweet-tempered, so we have a fresh one every year,--and they never fail me. Three months after they come, as regular as clock-work, they ask me to be their wife. Now, I appeal to you,"--clasping her hands and wrinkling up all her pretty forehead,--"_do_ I look like a curate's wife?"
"You do not," replies Luttrell, emphatically, regarding with interest the _debonnaire, spirituelle_ face before him: "no, you most certainly do not."
"Well, I thought not myself; yet each of those deluded young men saw something angelic about me, and would insist on asking me to share his lot. They kept themselves sternly blind to the fact that I detest with equal vigor broth and old women."
"Intolerable presumption!" says Luttrell, parenthetically.
"Was it? I don't think I looked at it in that light. They were all very estimable men, and Mr. Rochfort was positively handsome. You, you may well stare, but some curates, you know, are good-looking, and he was decidedly High Church. In fact, he wasn't half so bad as the generality of them," says Molly, relentingly. "Only--it may be wrong, but the truth is I hate curates. I think nothing of them. They are a mixture of tea and small jokes, and are ever at a stand-still. They are always in the act of budding,--they never bloom; and then they are so afraid of the bishop."
"I thank my stars I'm not a curate," says Luttrell, devoutly.
"However,"--regretfully,--"they were _something_: a proposal is always an excitement. But the present man is married; so that makes it impossible for this present year. There was positively nothing to which to look forward. So you may fancy with what rapture I hailed your coming."