The girl was looking at him with big, inscrutable eyes, as he halted half-ashamed of his own words.
“I think,” she said slowly, after a little pause, “I think you must have inherited a great, great deal of ignorance, Caleb. For during the years while you were a baby, you were too young to acquire very much of it. And you couldn’t have acquired all your present stock in the thirty short years since that time. Besides, I don’t think even Nature can make a man quite foolish unless he helps her a little.”
“It sounds fine,” admitted Caleb, “But what does it mean? What break have I made now? If it was foolish to want you all to myself, always—”
“It wasn’t,” she interrupted, “And you ought to know it wasn’t. It—”
“Then what?”
“Mr. Caine,” said the girl, “told me once you were the cleverest man he knew. It made me very happy at the time. And I was nice to him all the rest of the afternoon. But I see now it only showed how few sensible men he knew. Let’s talk about something else.”
“But—hold on!” begged Caleb. “Honest, Dey, you ought to think twice before turnin’ down a chap like young Hawarden. His fam’ly—”
“I told you last week never to talk that way again,” said Desirée, with a stifled break in her voice, “Why do you try to make me unhappy?”
“Me?” gurgled Caleb in an utter bewilderment of distress. “Why, little girl, I’d cut my head off for you. Please don’t get sore on me. I’m no sort of a feller to talk to a girl like you. I’m always sayin’ the wrong thing without even knowin’ afterward just what it was that hurt you. An’ then I wish I had a third foot, so’s I could kick myself. It’s queer that Nature built men so that they couldn’t kick themselves or pat themselves on the back. Please be friends again. I—I wish there was some tea here I could drink, just to show you how sorry I am!”
The girl’s mood had changed. She laughed with such heartiness at his penitential attitude that he all at once felt full forgiveness was granted. If there was a forced note in her gaiety, his duller senses did not perceive it.