It WAS so droll!'
'Did anybody make game to be--'
'To be you? O dear yes!' cries Rosa, laughing with great
enjoyment. 'That was the first thing done.'
'I hope she did it pretty well,' says Edwin rather doubtfully.
'O, it was excellent!--I wouldn't dance with you, you know.'
Edwin scarcely seems to see the force of this; begs to know if he
may take the liberty to ask why?
'Because I was so tired of you,' returns Rosa. But she quickly
adds, and pleadingly too, seeing displeasure in his face: 'Dear
Eddy, you were just as tired of me, you know.'
'Did I say so, Rosa?'
'Say so! Do you ever say so? No, you only showed it. O, she did
it so well!' cries Rosa, in a sudden ecstasy with her counterfeit
betrothed.
'It strikes me that she must be a devilish impudent girl,' says
Edwin Drood. 'And so, Pussy, you have passed your last birthday in
this old house.'
'Ah, yes!' Rosa clasps her hands, looks down with a sigh, and
shakes her head.
'You seem to be sorry, Rosa.'
'I am sorry for the poor old place. Somehow, I feel as if it would
miss me, when I am gone so far away, so young.'
'Perhaps we had better stop short, Rosa?'
She looks up at him with a swift bright look; next moment shakes
her head, sighs, and looks down again.
'That is to say, is it, Pussy, that we are both resigned?'
She nods her head again, and after a short silence, quaintly bursts
out with: 'You know we must be married, and married from here,
Eddy, or the poor girls will be so dreadfully disappointed!'
For the moment there is more of compassion, both for her and for
himself, in her affianced husband's face, than there is of love.
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