"Shyness! Humph!" was her response. "She has no more shyness than a brass monkey. That's vulgar, of course, Ruth. I meant it to be to match the subject."
I put in a weak defense of Mrs. Weston, although I honestly do find her a most unsatisfactory person. She is self-conscious, and somehow she does not seem to me to be very frank. Very likely, moreover, she had been disconcerted by the too evident snubs of my unmanageable cousin.
"If I snubbed her," was the uncompromising rejoinder with which a suggestion of this sort was met, "I'm sure I am not ashamed of it. To think of her saying that you evidently wanted to show Tuskamuck how to do things in style! Does she think any person with style would let her into the house?"
"Oh, bother!" she retorted. "You are only a goose, with no sense at all. To think you once thought of marrying that country booby yourself!"
I was too much hurt to reply, and probably my face showed my feeling, for Cousin Mehitable burst into a laugh.
"You needn't look so grumpy about it," she cried. "All's well that ends well. You're safely out of that, thank heaven!"
I felt that loyalty to George required that I should protest, but she interrupted me.
"Don't be a humbug, Ruth," she said; "and for pity's sake don't be such a fool as to try to humbug yourself. You're not a sentimental schoolgirl to moon after a man, especially when he's shown what his taste is by taking up with such a horror as Mrs. Weston."
"I am fond of him," I asserted, stubbornly enough.
She seized me by the shoulders, and looked with her quick black eyes into mine so that I felt as if she could see down to my very toes.
"Can you look me in the face, Ruth Privet, and tell me you really care for a man who could marry that ignorant, vulgar, dowdy woman just for her pretty face? Can you fool yourself into thinking that you haven't had a lucky escape from a man that's in every way your inferior? You know you have! Why, can you honestly think now for a moment of marrying him without feeling your backbone all gooseflesh?"
Fortunately she did not insist upon my answering her, but shook me and let me go. I doubt if I could have borne to have her press her questions. I was suddenly conscious that George has changed or that my idea of him has altered; and that if he were still single, I could not marry him under any circumstances.