“Till I ask you!

Well, I never see the beat of it in my born days! I lay you’ll be the Methusalem-numskull of creation before ever I ask you — or the likes of you.”

“Well,” he says, “it does surprise me so. I can’t make it out, somehow. They said you would, and I thought you would. But — “ He stopped and looked around slow, like he wished he could run across a friendly eye somewheres, and fetched up on the old gentleman’s, and says, “Didn’t you think she’d like me to kiss her, sir?”

“Why, no; I — I — well, no, I b’lieve I didn’t.”

Then he looks on around the same way to me, and says: