He approached her again, but she drew back, surprised at his singular manner, and said, "No, José, it is not my way to kiss any lad, no matter how old a friend he is or how glad I am to see him." "You have grown very coy!" he said, in an angry and scoffing tone. "I don't think I have ever been coy with you, Joseph; you never gave me any reason to be; and as you never asked me to be familiar, I never had occasion to forbid your kissing me. Nothing is changed between us and I do not know why you should now lay claim to what has never entered into our friendship." "What an amount of talk and wry faces, all about a kiss," said Joseph, his anger rising. "If I never asked for what you were ready enough to give others it was because I was a young fool. I thought you would receive me better now that I am neither a ninny nor a coward." "What is the matter with him?" asked Brulette, surprised and even frightened, and coming close up to me. "Is it really he, or some one who looks like him? I thought I saw our José, but this is not his speech nor his face nor his friendship." "How have I changed, Brulette?" began José, a little disconcerted and already repentant. "Is it that I now have the courage I once lacked to tell you that you are to me the loveliest in the world, and that I have always longed for your good graces? There's no offence in that, I hope; and perhaps I am not more unworthy of them than others whom you allow to hang round you." So saying, with a return of his vexation, he looked me in the face, and I saw he was trying to pick a quarrel with whoever would take him up. I asked nothing better than to draw his first fire. "Joseph," I said, "Brulette is right in thinking you changed. There is nothing surprising in that. We know how we part, but not how we meet again. You need not be surprised, either, if you find a little change in me. I have always been quiet and patient, standing by you in all your difficulties and consoling your vexations; but if you have grown more unjust than you used to be, I have grown more touchy, and I take it ill that you should say to my cousin before me that she is prodigal of her kisses and allows too many young men about her." Joseph eyed me contemptuously, and put on a really devilish look of malice as he laughed in my face. Then he said, crossing his arms, and looking at me as though he were taking my measure, "Well, is it possible, Tiennet? Can this be you? However, I always did doubt you, and the friendship you professed--to deceive me." "What do you mean by that, José?" said Brulette, much affronted and fancying he had lost his mind. "Where did you get the right to blame me, and why are you trying to see something wrong or ridiculous between my cousin and me? Are you ill or drunken, that you forget the respect you owe me and the affection that you know I deserve?"