Chapter 17 - Page 2

moderately sensible woman could overlook
rodomontade so exceedingly desperate. It was trespassing too boldly
on the proprieties to utter such nonsense to a gentlewoman, and Tom,
who had got his practice in a very low school, was doomed to discover
that he had overreached himself.

"I am not certain I quite understand you, Mr. Thurston, answered the
half-irritated, half-amused young lady; "your language is so very
extraordinary--your images so unusual--"

"Say, rather, that it is your own image, loveliest incorporation of
perceptible incarnations," interrupted Tom, determined to go for the
whole, and recalling some rare specimens of magazine eloquence--
"Talk not of images, obdurate maid, when you are nothing but an image
yourself."

"I! Mr. Thurston--and of what is it your pleasure to accuse me of being
the image?"

"O! unutterable wo--yes, inexorable girl, your vacillating 'yes' has
rendered me the impersonation of that oppressive sentiment, of which
your beauty and excellence have become the mocking reality. Alas,
alas! that bearded men,"--Tom's face was covered with hair--"Alas,
alas! that bearded men should be brought to weep over the contrarieties
of womanly caprice."

Here Tom bowed his head, and after a grunting sob or two, he raised
his handkerchief in a very pathetic manner to his face, and THOUGHT
to himself--"Well, if she stand THAT, the Lord only knows what I shall
say next."

As for Julia, she was amused, though at first she had been a little
frightened. The girl had a good deal of spirit, and she had tant soit peu
of mother Eve's love of mischief in her. She determined to "make
capital" out of the affair, as the Americans say, in shop-keeping slang.

{tant soit peu = an ever so tiny amount}

"What is the 'yes,' of which you speak," she inquired, "and, on which
you seem to lay so much stress?"

"That 'yes' has been my bane and antidote," answered Tom, rallying for
a new and still more desperate charge. "When first pronounced by your
rubicund lips, it thrilled on my amazed senses like a beacon of light--"

"Mr. Thurston--Mr. Thurston--what DO you mean?"

"Ah, d---n it," thought Tom, "I should have said HUMID light'--how the
deuce did I come to forget that word--it would have rounded the
sentence beautifully."

"What do I mean, angel of 'humid light,'" answered Tom, aloud; "I mean
all I say, and lots of feeling besides. When the heart is anguished with
unutterable emotion, it speaks in accents that deaden all the nerves, and
thrill the ears." Tom was getting to be