"Don"t talk like that, Madeline. You know I like you. You were immense last night. Any other girl I know, except my sister Tony, would have had hysterics and fainting fits and lord knows what else with half the excuse you had. And you never made a bit of fuss about your head, though it must have hurt like the deuce. I say, you don"t think it is going to leave a scar, do you?"
He leaned forward with genuine concern to examine the red wound.
"I think it is more than likely. Lot you"ll care, Ted Holiday. You"ll never come back to see whether it leaves a scar or not. See that bee over there nosing around that elderberry. Think he"ll come back next week?
Not much. I know your kind," scornfully.
That bit into the lad"s complacency.
"Of course, I care and of course, I"ll come back," he protested, though a moment before he had had not the slightest wish or purpose to see her again, rather to the contrary.
"To see whether there is a scar?"
"To see you," he played up gallantly.
Her hard young face softened.
"Will you, honest, Ted Holiday? Will you come back?"
She put out her hand and touched his. Her eyes were suddenly wistful, gentle, beseeching.
"Sure I"ll come back. Why wouldn"t I?" The touch of her hand, the new softness, almost pathos of her mood touched him, appealed to the chivalry always latent in a Holiday.
He heard her breath come quickly, saw her full bosom heave, felt the warm pressure of her hand. He wanted to put his arm around her but he did not follow the impulse. The code of Holiday "n.o.blesse oblige" was operating.
"I wish I could believe that," Madeline sighed, looking down into the water which whirled and eddied in white foam and splash over the rocks.
"I"d like to think you really wanted to come--really cared about seeing me again. I know I"m not your kind."
He started involuntarily at her voicing unexpectedly his own recent thought.
"Oh, you needn"t be surprised," she threw at him half angrily. "Don"t you suppose I know that better than you do. Don"t you suppose I know what the girls you are used to look like? Well, I do. I"ve watched "em, on the street, on the campus, in church, everywhere. I"ve even seen your sister and watched her, too. Somebody pointed her out to me once when she had made a hit in a play and I"ve seen her at Glee Club concerts and at vespers in the choir. She is lovely--lovely the way I"d like to be. It isn"t that she"s any prettier. She isn"t. It"s just that she"s different--acts different--looks different--dresses different from me. I can"t make myself like her and the rest, no matter how I try. And I do try. You don"t know how hard I try. I got this dress because I saw your sister Tony wearing a pink dress once. I thought maybe it would make me look more like her. But it doesn"t. It makes me look more _not_ like her than ever, doesn"t it?" she appealed rather disconcertingly. "It"s horrid. I hate it."
"I don"t know much about girls" dresses," said Ted. "But, now you speak of it, maybe it would be prettier if it were a little--" he paused for a word--"quieter," he decided on. "Do you ever wear white? Tony wears it a lot and I think she looks nice in it."
"I"ve got a white dress. I thought about putting it on to-day. But somehow it didn"t look quite nice enough. I thought--well, I thought I looked handsomer in the pink. I wanted to look pretty--for you." The last was very low--scarcely audible.
"You look good to me all right," said the boy heartily and he meant it.
He thought she looked prettier at the moment than she had looked at any time since he had made her acquaintance.
Perhaps he was right. She had laid aside for once her mask of hard boldness and was just a simple, humble, rather pathetic little girl, voicing secret aspirations toward a fineness life had denied her.
"I say, Madeline," Ted went on. "You don"t--meet other chaps the way you met me to-day, do you?" Set the blind to lead the blind! If there was anything absurd in scapegrace Ted"s turning mentor he was unconscious of the absurdity, was exceedingly in earnest.
"What"s that to you?" She snapped the mask back into place.
"Nothing--that is--I wouldn"t--that"s all."
She laughed shrilly.
"You"re a pretty one to talk," she scoffed.
Ted flushed.
"I know I am. See here, Madeline. You"re dead right. I ought not to have taken you out last night. I ought not to have let you meet me here to-day."
"I made you--I made you do both those things."
Ted shook his head at that.
"A man"s to blame always," he a.s.serted.
"No, he isn"t," denied Madeline. "A girl"s to blame always."
They stared at each other a moment while the brook tinkled through the silence. Then they both laughed at the solemnity of their contradictions.
"But there isn"t a bit of harm done," went on Madeline. "You see, I knew that first night on the train that you were a gentleman."
"Some gentlemen are rotters," said Ted Holiday, with a wisdom beyond his twenty years.
"But you are not."
"No, I"m not; but some other chap might be. That is why I wish you would promise not to go in for this sort of thing."
"With anybody but you," she stipulated.
"Not with anybody at all," corrected Ted soberly, remembering his own recent restrained impulse to put his arm around her.
"Well, I don"t want to--at least not with anybody but you. I never did it before with anybody. Honest, Ted, I never did."
"That"s good. I felt sure that you hadn"t."
"Why?"
He grinned sheepishly and stooped to break off a dry twig from a nearby bush.
"By the way you didn"t let me kiss you," he admitted. "A fellow likes that in a girl. Did you know it?" He tossed away the twig and looked back at the girl as he asked the question.
"I thought they liked--the other thing."
"They do and they don"t," said Ted, his paradox again betraying a scarcely to be expected wisdom. "But that is neither here nor there. What I started out to say was that I"m glad you don"t make a practice of this pick-up business. It--it"s no good," he summed up.
"I know." Madeline nodded understanding of the import of his warning. She was far too handsome and too prematurely developed physically to be devoid of experience of the ways of the opposite s.e.x. Like Ophelia she knew there were tricks in the world and she liked frank Ted Holiday the better for reminding her of them. "I won"t do it," she promised. "That is, unless you don"t ever come back yourself. I don"t know what I"ll do then--something awful, maybe."
"I"ll come fast enough. I"ll come to-morrow." he added obeying a sudden impulse, Ted fashion.
"Will you?" The girl"s face flushed with delight. "When?"
"To-morrow afternoon. I can"t dodge the ivy stuff in the morning. Will four o"clock do all right?"