"The doings in the city," he answered. "The big things going on anywhere."
"Does that get you very far with her?" she asked in surprise.
"As far as I can get," he replied.
She thought to advise him. "You don't understand girls, Stephen. The talk you give her isn't what she wants. A girl of her age needs—flattery, you know, and nice little things said."
"You'd make me into a Jim Wayne," he retorted. "A monkey in a Panama, saying foolish things." Mrs. Harmon drew herself up, but he did not perceive. "Pretty fool I'd be, saying the things he does. I heard a talk of his and Beth's, and this is the sort of thing he said—." But Ellis misrepresented Jim entirely, having looked at him from a strictly personal point of view. The conversation, harmless as it was, is best taken at first hand.
"How swell you look to-night!" Jim had begun. "Gad, that rose in your hair—trust a girl to know what's nifty!"
"Don't be silly," Beth replied.
"Straight!" Jim protested. "Never saw you look so stunning. This moonlight brings it all out, you know. Poetic, Beth, on my word! I say, let's go down on the beach, and you can recite me that thing of Tennyson's."
"Shelley's," Beth corrected him.
"Just as good," said Jim cheerfully. "Come on, do!"