"I think you must be mistaken," she continued.

"I think it's your brother who is blushing.

I've thrown him into confusion." "How ?" She laughed, and then, leaning to him a little, said in a tone as confidential as she could make it, under cover of the uproar.

"By trying to begin with him a courtship I meant for YOU!" This might well be a style new to Jim; and it was.

He supposed it a nonsensical form of badinage, and yet it took his breath.