The Argosy — page 252: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

In Half an Hour. 235 in the swing ; argal, you are the witness. Now, with nature looking so fair about you, with the sky so blue above you, the cool green woods waving to your right, and the gorgeous dahlias smiling to your left, you feel undoubtedly that you could not possibly speak an untruth ; hence you are committed to speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Now I commence.” Missy gazed at her interlocutor with wide and astonished eyes. She checked the restless vibrations of the swing, and pressed her feet firmly on the ground, while she encircled the ropes with her arms, clasping her hands before her. She was puzzled, but not displeased. A lovelier witness, the young man thought, he had never seen. “Miss Missy,” he began, ‘‘do you know what flirting is?” “Ves,” said Missy, promptly. “Then define flirting.” “TI did not say Icould define it,” said Missy, with a little appearance of pouting. ‘Then you do zot know what flirting is.” ** Yes, I do,” cried Missy. ‘‘ Flirting is when two people seem to like each other very much, and to live only for each other, and then they part, and forget one another altogether.” ** And their intercourse leaves no mark ?” **No, they have been only amused.” ‘But suppose they have been more than amused—suppose their association /as left a mark ?”’ ‘Then they have been in earnest.” ‘** And what is the result of being in earnest? ” “It is love,” said Missy, in a low, sweet voice. She glanced downwards, and was completely unaware that Mr. O’Hagan’s gaze was fixed upon her, and still less was she aware that his breast was swelling with an uncalled-for indignation on her account. His was an imaginative nature, prone to leap to superlative possibilities, and something in Missy’s youthfulness, beauty and naiveté, had made him jump toa possibility of the most exaggerated evil. At this moment he found himself speculating about some man who might some day be only amused with this innocent creature, while she, perchance, might be in earnest. ‘‘I would horsewhip such a fellow within an inch of his life,” he said, wrathfully, in his heart. Then he suddenly remembered that, as far as he knew, there was nosuch man, and he smiled contemptuously at his own fantastic conceit. Moreover the present was all his own. ‘What is love, Miss Missy ?” he asked, abruptly. © ‘* Love is when the beautiful youth comes,” she said, still looking away. And who Is the beautiful youth?” he inquired. He felt curious to know whether a young man of six or seven-and-twenty, not bad looking—Oh, by no means bad-looking—and not altogether stupid, certainly with some prospects of professional success, might be Comicbooks.c©