Roberts: "Insulted? By no manner of means! Nothing was further from my
thoughts. I--I--can explain it all in a moment, my dear sir, if you
will have patience; I can indeed. I have the highest respect for the
lady, and I'm quite incapable of offering her an affront. The fact
is--I hardly know how to begin--"

McIlheny: "Go ahn, sor; or I'll have to do the beginnun' meself,
pretty soon." He shifts himself from one foot to another with a
saltatory briskness.

Roberts: "The fact is, my wife had engaged a cook, up-town, and she
had sent her down here to meet me, and go out with me to our summer
place at Weston."

McIlheny: "An' fwhat has all that rigamarole to do wid your speakin'
to a lady ye'd never been inthrojuced to? Fwhat had yer wife's cuke to
do with Mrs. McIlheny?"

Roberts: "Why, I didn't know the cook by sight, you see. My wife had
engaged her up-town, and appointed her to meet me here, without
reflecting that I had never seen her, and wouldn't know who she was,
when I _did_ see her; she partly expected to be here herself, and so I
didn't reflect, either."

McIlheny, with signs of an amicable interest: "An' she lift ye to mate
a lady ye never had seen before, and expicted ye to know her by
soight?"

Roberts: "Precisely."