"If ever I do grow to like you as much as you fancy, why, then you may kiss me--sometimes." "That's a bargain," says he.
Again he suppresses a desire to laugh.

It seems to him that she is intensely interesting in some way.
"In the meantime," says he, with quite a polite air, "may I not kiss you now ?" "No!" says she.

It is the lightest monosyllable, but fraught with much energy.

She tilts the shoulder nearest to him, and peeps at him over it, with a half-merry little air.
She sets Rylton's mind at work.

Is she only a silly charming child, or an embryo flirt of the first water?
Whatever she is, at all events, she is very new, very fresh--an innovation! He continues to look at her.
"Really no ?" questions he.
She nods her head.
"And yet you have said 'Yes' to everything else ?" She nods her head again.