“Stop!” she ordered. “I’m a little beast to behave so. He—cared for me. He asked me to marry him. There ought to be something sacred in all that. And here I am making fun of him. Caleb, please say something to make me more ashamed.”
“You’re all right, girl!” chuckled Caleb in huge delight. “Poor pink-an’-white Blacarda! You were—”
“I wasn’t! I ought to be whipped for telling you. But—but somehow, I seem to tell you everything. Honestly, I wouldn’t tell anyone else. Honestly! You know that, don’t you?”
“I know you’re the whitest, brightest, jolliest kid that ever happened,” returned Conover, “but you needn’t bother about Blacarda. I won’t tell. Now I’ve got to get out.”
“Aren’t you going to take me for a walk or a drive or anything? It’s such a gorgeous day, and it’s so early. Almost as early as it ever gets to be.”
“I can’t, worse luck!” said he. “I’ve got a measly appointment at the Arareek. An’ besides—say, little girl, I don’t know about walking or driving with you any more.”
“Caleb!”
“Listen, till I explain. Now that Mrs. Hawarden’s took such a fancy to you an’ took you up an’ chap’roned you to places where I’d be chased out with a broom—an’ all that—well, you get invited to big folks’ houses. That’s how you met Blacarda, wasn’t it? He travels with the gold-shirt crowd. Now, that crowd don’t care about me. They will, some day. But they don’t, yet. An’ if you’re seen around with a rank outsider like me—it’ll—it may kind of make ’em think you’re the same sort I am. An’ that’ll be liable to queer you with ’em. An—”
“Caleb Conover!”
He stopped, thoroughly uncomfortable, yet vaguely glad of having eased his mind of its worry for her prospects. She was frowning up at him with all the menacing ferocity of an Angora kitten.