"How unmaidenly! How immodest!" Perpetua looks at her with large, surprised eyes.
"Why," says she.
"I really think," interrupts the professor hurriedly, who see breakers ahead, "if I were to take Perpetua for a walk--a drive--to--er--to some place or other--it might destroy this _ennui_ of which she complains.

If you will allow her to come out with me for an hour or so, I----" "If you are waiting for _my_ sanction, Mr.Curzon, to that extraordinary proposal, you will wait some time," says Miss Majendie slowly, frigidly.

She draws the shawl still closer, and sniffs again.
"But----" "There is no 'But,' sir.

The subject doesn't admit of argument.

In my young days, and I should think"-- scrutinising him exhaustively through her glasses--_"in yours_, it was not customary for a young _gentlewoman _to go out walking, alone, with _'a man'!!"_ If she had said with a famished tiger, she couldn't have thrown more horror into her tone.
The professor had shrunk a little from that classing of her age with his, but has now found matter for hope in it.
"Still--my age--as you suggest--so far exceeds Perpetua's--I am indeed so much older than she is, that I might be allowed to escort her wherever it may please her to go." "The _real_ age of a man nowadays, sir, is a thing impossible to know," says Miss Majendie.