"You mean that a boy who never is--?"
"Is no boy for ME!"
I held her tighter. "You like them with the spirit to be naughty?"
Then, keeping pace with her answer, "So do I!" I eagerly brought out.
"But not to the degree to contaminate--"
"To contaminate?"--my big word left her at a loss.
I explained it. "To corrupt."
She stared, taking my meaning in; but it produced in her an odd laugh.
"Are you afraid he'll corrupt YOU?" She put the question with such a fine
bold humor that, with a laugh, a little silly doubtless, to match her own,
I gave way for the time to the apprehension of ridicule.
But the next day, as the hour for my drive approached, I cropped
up in another place. "What was the lady who was here before?"
"The last governess? She was also young and pretty--
almost as young and almost as pretty, miss, even as you."
"Ah, then, I hope her youth and her beauty helped her!"
I recollect throwing off. "He seems to like us young and pretty!"
"Oh, he DID," Mrs. Grose assented: "it was the way he liked everyone!"
She had no sooner spoken indeed than she caught herself up.
"I mean that's HIS way--the master's."
I was struck. "But of whom did you speak first?"
She looked blank, but she colored. "Why, of HIM."
"Of the master?"
"Of who else?"
There was so obviously no one else that the next moment I
had lost my impression of her having accidentally said more
than she meant; and I merely asked what I wanted to know.
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