It is nevertheless not with his eventual commentary on this course that we are concerned, so much as with the freshness of those first moments. It belonged on the spot to still another of them that he found occasion to take her up somehow, in all good faith and good humour, on that oddity she had appeared to let fall, the matter of Mrs. Midmore's being so in fear of her as to have had to make a secret of despatching the morocco case. "We rather suppose over there, you know," he mentioned, "that in England at least the children are bred to such submission that the parents haven't to conspire for freedom behind their backs. And, to tell you all," he further explained, "we have thought of your mother as such a very high lady that to make our image fit the facts we must apparently think of _you_ as a higher." "Do you consider," the girl asked at this, "that you've met me with such extraordinary signs of awe? I won't pretend indeed I'm a bleating lamb--but you'll see for yourself that, though we're remarkably alike, I think, and have both plenty of decision, or call it even temper, there's between us an affection stronger even than our force of will on either side and which has always kept difficulties down. She happens to like what I like, just as I want to like, being so fond of her, what she does--though I don't say that if that were different there wouldn't be a touch of strife. If we've the same spirit therefore we've luckily for the most part the same tastes--which I dare say I wouldn't tell you, however, if I thought you'd be afraid of me for 'em. For all my boldness, at the same time, and which I come as honestly by as you will, I'd never look at a man of whom I shouldn't myself once in a while be afraid. Unless you're prepared, sir, properly to make me so," she laughed, "we may therefore perhaps have gone too far--for mamma herself, in this, I think, would be as disappointed as I am." "I don't care a bit how far we've gone," Ralph answered with the richest resolution, "since the more of you all I please, no doubt, and putting any fierceness quite aside, the better it will be for our union. You don't expect me to agree to terrorise you, I suppose," he pursued with ease, "and I shall defy you to prove to me that if I suit you it won't be because I'm amiable." With which he stood ever so masterfully smiling at her. "Oh indeed I can see you're amiable!" she cried with joy. "I'll be hanged," he declared, quite keeping up his tone, "if I'll take the trouble ever to be anything else! I've the assurance to say that you must take me exactly as I am." "Why what in the world do I want of you but that you should show assurance? Isn't it what I just said?--and if people don't find you ready for them, when I love you for your readiness," she cried, "I think I shall box their ears."