"Perhaps," said Mrs. Rosscott laughing, and then she turned as if to go in.
"Oh, don"t," said her lover, barring the way with great suddenness; "you really mustn"t, you know. I"ve been patient for so long and been good for so long and I must be rewarded-I really must. Do come out with me somewhere-anywhere-for only a half-hour,-please."
She looked at him.
"Won"t Maude do?" she asked.
"No, she won"t," he said beneath his breath; "whatever do you suggest such a thing for? You make me ready to tell you to your face that you want to go as bad as I want you to go, but I shan"t say so because I know too much."
"You do know a lot, don"t you?" said she, with an expression of great respect; "why, if you were to dare to hint to me that I wanted to go out with you instead of staying in and talking Rembrandt with Mr. Morley, I"d never forgive you the longest day I live."
"I know you wouldn"t," said he, "and you may be quite sure that I shall not say it. On the contrary I shall merely implore you to forget your own pleasure in consideration of mine."
"I really ought to devote the morning to Mr. Morley," she said meditatively; "it"s such an honor his coming here, you know."
"A little bit of a whiskered monkey," said Jack in great disgust; "an honor, indeed!"
"He"s a very great man," said Mrs. Rosscott; "every sort of inst.i.tution has given him a few letters to put after his name, and some have given him whole syllables."
"You must get a straw hat, you know, or a sun-shade; it will be hot in half an hour."
"Oh, I couldn"t stay out half an hour; fifteen minutes would be the longest."
"All right, fifteen minutes, then, but do hurry."
"I didn"t say that I would go," she said, opening her eyes; "and yet I feel myself gone." She laughed lightly.
"Do hurry," he pleaded freshly; "oh, I am so hungry to-"
She disappeared within doors and five minutes later came back with one of those charming floppy English garden hats, tied with a muslin bow beneath her dimpled chin.
"This is so good of me," she said, as they went down the steps.
"Very good, heavenly good," said Jack; and then neither spoke again until they had crossed the Italian garden and entered the American wood. She looked into his eyes then and smiled half-shyly and half-provokingly.
"You are such a baby," she said; "such a baby! Do ask me why and I"ll tell you half a dozen whys. I"d love to."
The path was the smoothest and shadiest of forest paths, the hour was the sweetest and sunniest of summer hours, the moment was the brightest and happiest of all the moments which they had known together-up to now.
"Do tell me," he said; "I"m wild to know."
He took her hand and laid it on his arm. For that little while she was certainly his and his alone, and no man had a better claim to her. "Go on and tell me," he repeated.
"There is one big reason and there are lots of little ones. Which will you have first?"
"The little ones, please."
"Then, listen; you are like a baby because you are impatient, because you are spoilt, because when you want anything you think that you must have it, and because you like to be walked with."
"Are those the little reasons," he said when she paused; "and what"s the big one?"
"The big one," she said slowly; "Oh, I"m afraid that you won"t like the big one!"
"Perhaps it will be all the better for me if I don"t," he laughed; "at any rate I beg and pray and plead to know it."
"What a dear boy!" she laughed. "If you want to know as badly as that, I"d have to tell you anyhow, whether I wanted to or not. It"s because I"m so much the oldest."
"Oh!" said Jack, much disappointed. "Is that why?"
"And then too," she continued, "you seem even younger because of your being so unsophisticated."
"So I am unsophisticated, am I?" he asked grimly.
"Yes," she said nodding; "at least you impress me so."
"I"m glad of that," he said after a little pause.
She looked up quickly.
"Truly?"
"Yes, indeed."
"Oh," she laughed, "if you say that, then I shall know that you are less unsophisticated than I thought you were."
"Why so?" he asked surprised.
"Don"t you know that meek, mild men always try to insinuate that they are regular fire-eaters, and vice versa? Well, it"s so-and it"s so every time.
There was once a man who was kissing me, and he drew my hands up around his neck in such a clever, gentle way that I was absolutely positive that he had had no end of practice drawing arms up in that way and I just couldn"t help saying: "Oh, how many women you must have kissed!" What do you think he answered?-merely smiled and said: "Not so many as you might imagine." He showed how much he knew by the way he answered, for oh! he had. I found that out afterwards."
"What did you do then?" he asked, frowning. "Cut him?"
"No; I married him. Why, of course I was going to marry him when he kissed me, or I wouldn"t have let him kiss me. Do you suppose I let men kiss me as a general thing? What are you thinking of?"
"I was thinking of you," he said. "It"s a horrible habit I"ve fallen into lately. But, never mind; keep on talking."
"I don"t remember what I was saying," she said. "Oh, yes, I do too. About men, about good and bad men. Now, even if I didn"t know how much trouble you"d made in the world, I"d divine it all the instant that you were willing to admit being unsophisticated. People always crave to be the opposite of what they are; the drug shops couldn"t sell any peroxide of hydrogen if that wasn"t so."
He laughed and forgot his previous vexation.
"Now, look at me," she continued. "Oh, I didn"t mean really-I mean figuratively; but never mind. Now, I"m nothing but a bubble and a toy, and I ache to be considered a philosopher. Don"t you remember my telling you what a philosopher I was, the very first conversation that we ever had together? I do try so hard to delude myself into thinking I am one, that some days I"m almost sure that I really am one. Last night, for instance, I was thinking how nice it would be for my Cousin Maude to marry you."
"Ye G.o.ds!" cried Jack.
"She"s so very rich," Mrs. Rosscott pursued calmly; "and you know the law of heredity is an established scientific fact now, so you could feel quite safe as to her nose skipping the next generation."
Jack was audibly amused.