Page 228 - of-human-bondage-

they would say she was old enough to be his mother.
‘Twopence for your thoughts,’ smiled Miss Wilkinson.
‘I was thinking about you,’ he answered boldly.
That at all events committed him to nothing.
‘What were you thinking?’
‘Ah, now you want to know too much.’
‘Naughty boy!’ said Miss Wilkinson.
There it was again! Whenever he had succeeded in work-
ing himself up she said something which reminded him of
the governess. She called him playfully a naughty boy when
he did not sing his exercises to her satisfaction. This time he
grew quite sulky.
‘I wish you wouldn’t treat me as if I were a child.’
‘Are you cross?’
‘Very.’
‘I didn’t mean to.’
She put out her hand and he took it. Once or twice lately
when they shook hands at night he had fancied she slightly
pressed his hand, but this time there was no doubt about it.
He did not quite know what he ought to say next. Here
at last was his chance of an adventure, and he would be a
fool not to take it; but it was a little ordinary, and he had
expected more glamour. He had read many descriptions
of love, and he felt in himself none of that uprush of emo-
tion which novelists described; he was not carried off his
feet in wave upon wave of passion; nor was Miss Wilkinson
the ideal: he had often pictured to himself the great violet
eyes and the alabaster skin of some lovely girl, and he had
thought of himself burying his face in the rippling masses