"I--I wish I was more worthy of you, Phyllis."
"Stop kissing my toes--it tickles--and oh, Cyril, don’t bite them!"
"I’m ashamed--you are so sweet and good and clever and brave--and the whole of me isn’t worth that little pink one, and I don’t think I’ve ever loved you so much as I do this minute, or _respected_ you more. If you were married to a street-car conductor I believe you’d make him president of the United States--and if your husband mayn’t bite you, who can?"
"And I swear by that one that I love you better than anything in the world; and by that one I’ll be true to you all my life; and by that one I’ll cut my tongue out before I’ll ever say an unkind word to you again; and by that one I’m going to do everything you say, just as though you were an angel from Heaven, which you are if ever there was one; and by that fat little big toe that I’m going to try to copy the tenderest, gentlest, most exquisite nature that God ever breathed into a human being; and by the whole chubby little white satin foot--"
"I thought it was all settled. We’ll start for New York as soon as I am fired--officially."
"I’m so infatuated with you that perhaps I don’t see things as they are. It is not a dream, is it, that you really could get on in New York--I mean if you lived down all the ill will against you there? I try to detach myself, and criticize you dispassionately--but you always seem to me so tremendously good."
"In handing out the goods--? Not a particle, Phyllis. Why should I? Haven’t I done it?"
"Why, Phyllis, this isn’t brag. I’ve got notices to show for it, corking notices. What you have seen me do is not my best. No one could do that with the support I get, and I have to carry the whole outfit single handed. A company ought to be a string orchestra--and they give me a brass band!"
"Have you got the notices?--I’d love to see them!"
"They’re at the bottom of the trunk somewhere--three books of them."
After long rummaging the books were produced. Phyllis, who in the interval had put on a peignoir, and begun to comb her hair, seized on one of them enthusiastically. It was an unwieldy, shabby old volume, and so heavy it was hard to hold. The exertion, and perhaps the excitement had caused Adair’s head to throb again, and he was glad to stretch his length on the bed while Phyllis, drawing up a rocking chair, seated herself as close as she could beside him.