pose it too if she liked. "Oh, endless, tiresome ones, no doubt!"
This sketch of them made her wonder. "You mean they'll take so very, very long?"
He seemed after all to know perfectly what he meant. "Every hour, every month, that I can possibly make them last!"
She was with him here, however, but to a certain point. "You mustn't drag them out too much—must you? Won't he think in that case you may want to retract?"
Yule apparently tried to focus Mr. Prodmore under this delusion, and with a success that had a quick, odd result. "I shouldn't be so terribly upset by his mistake, you know, even if he did!"
His manner, with its slight bravado, left her proportionately shocked. "Oh, it would never do to give him any colour whatever for supposing you to have any doubt that, as one may say, you've pledged your honour."
He devoted to this proposition more thought than its simplicity would have seemed to demand; but after a minute, at all events, his intelligence triumphed. "Of course not—not when I haven't any doubt!"
Though his intelligence had triumphed, she still wished to show she was there to support it.
