“What have you done with her now?”
“Am I her keeper?” I felt inclined to ask; but I simply answered, “I have shaken her well, and would have shaken her better, but she escaped out of my hands and ran away.”
“Would you favour me,” he asked, “by watching over her this one evening, and observing that she does nothing imprudent—does not, for instance, run out into the night-air immediately after dancing?”
“I may, perhaps, look after her a little; since you wish it; but she likes her own way too well to submit readily to control.”
“She is so young, so thoroughly artless,” said he.
“To me she is an enigma,” I responded.
“Is she?” he asked—much interested. “How?”
“It would be difficult to say how—difficult, at least, to tell you how.”
“And why me?”
“I wonder she is not better pleased that you are so much her friend.”