He might take up a pencil, go closer to her. ''You see how I have Miss Lilly hold the lead? Her grip is a lady''s grip, however, and needs firming. I think your hand, Agnes, would bear a pencil better. Here, won''t you try?''
Once he takes her fingers. She colours scarlet at his touch. ''Do you blush?'' he says then, in amazement. ''You don''t suppose I mean to insult you?'' ''No, sir!''
''Well, why do you blush?'' -■ ''I am only a little warm, sir.'' ''Warm, in December—?''
And so on. He has a talent for torment, quite as polished as my own; and I ought, in observing this, to grow cautious. I do not. The more he teases, the more bewildered Agnes becomes, the more—like a top, revolving faster at the goading of a whip!—the more I taunt her myself.
Agnes,'' I say, while she undresses me or brushes out my hair, ''what are you thinking of? Of Mr Rivers?'' I stop her wrist, feel the grinding of the bones inside it. ''Do you think him handsome, Agnes? You do, I see it in your eye! And don''t young girls want handsome men?''
''Indeed, miss, I don''t know!''
''Do you say that? Then you''re a liar.'' I pinch her, in some soft part of her flesh—for of course, by now I know them all. ''You''re a liar and a flirt. Will you put those crimes upon your list, when you kneel beside your bed and ask your Father to forgive you? Do you 思 兔 網