"Marry!" he said. "I hope you have no such idea in your head."
She had not. Indeed her immunity from the crushes which occupied so much of the time and attention of her schoolmates occasioned her some concern. She feared her nature was a cold one. She disclaimed the idea of marriage, except as she had observed it in common.
"People do, you know," she said.
"A good many would be wiser if they didn't," said her father. "I am particularly opposed to young marriages."
He and her mother had married when they were young.
Presently she was obliged to tell him that she must go. He did not gainsay her decision, but she saw he took it as meaning that she had not really enjoyed herself. Yet when she tried to say she had—that she was sorry to leave him—it kept sounding as if she were saying it was a bore to go back and walk to the station with her mother. If only she could be loyal to one parent without being disloyal to the other!
She was a little bit late at the school. Her mother was just starting without her.
"Oh, I understand," she said, without listening to Lita's explanation. "Very natural. You were enjoying yourself; you don't need to explain."
Lita saw she was hurt but had determined to be nice about it.
They started on their walk. First they crossed the athletic fields; then their way would lie through the school woods, and then across stony fields, and then they would come out on the macadam road to the station—about three miles across country.