This question from any one else would not have disconcerted Bott in the least.  Queries as absurd had frequently been put to him in perfect good faith, and answered with ready and impudent ignorance.  But, at those giggling words of Maud Matchin, he turned livid and purple, and his breath came heavily.  There was room for but one thought in that narrow heart and brain.  He had long cherished a rather cowardly fondness for Maud, and now that this question was put to him by the agitated girl, his vanity would not suffer him to imagine that any one but himself was the subject of her dreams.  There was, to him, nothing especially out of the way in this sort of indirect proposal on the part of a young woman.  It was entirely in keeping with the general tone of sentiment among the people of his circle, which aimed at nothing less than the emancipation of the world from its old-fashioned decencies.

But he would not answer hastily; he had a coward’s caution.  He looked a moment at the girl’s brilliant color, her quick, high breathing, her eager eyes, with a gloating sense of his good luck.  But he wanted her thoroughly committed.  So he said, with an air in which there was already something offensively protecting: 

“Well, Miss Matchin, that depends on the speer.  If the affection be unilateral, it is one thing; if it be recippercal, it is another.  The currents of soul works in different ways.”

“But what I mean is, if a young lady likes a young gentleman pretty well, how is she going to find out for sure whether he likes her?” She went intrepidly through these words, though her cheeks were burning, and her eyes would fall in spite of her, and her head was singing.

There was no longer any doubt in Bott’s mind.  He was filled with an insolent triumph, and thought only of delaying as long as possible the love chase of which he imagined himself the object.  He said, slowly and severely: 

“The question is too imperious to be answered in haste.  I will put myself in the hands of the sperruts, and answer it as they choose after the intermission.”

He rose and bowed, and went to speak a word or two to his other visitors.  Sam came back and took his seat by Maud, and said: 

“I think the fun is about over.  Less go home.”

“Go home yourself, if you want to,” was the petulant reply.  “I am going to stay for the inspirational discourse.”

“Oh, my!” said Sam.  “That’s a beautiful word.  You don’t know how pretty your mouth looks when you say that.”  Sam had had his beer, and was brave and good-natured.

Bott retired once more behind the railing, but took his seat in a chair outside the curtain, in full view of the audience.  He sat for some minutes motionless, staring at vacancy.  He then slowly closed his eyes, and a convulsive shudder ran through his frame.  This was repeated at rapid intervals, with more or less violence.  He next passed his hands alternately over his forehead, as if he were wiping it, and throwing some invisible, sticky substance, with a vicious snap, to right and left.  At last, after a final shudder, which stiffened him into the image of death for a moment, he rose to his feet and, leaning on the railing, began to intone, in a dismal whine, a speech of which we need give only the opening words.