“I am sure mine is not so very much larger, if at all,” Nan hastened to say.
“No, but it is a different shape. A turned up nose is too trivial to excite reverence. Oh, no, I am a good comrade, Nan, but I don’t believe any man will ever really fall in love with me.” A statement which Nan denied utterly, and the subject of the artist was lost in the discussion which followed.
Yet Nan had meat enough to feed her soul upon that day, and trod on air as she went forth to her canoe. Never was fairer sky nor more placid lake, never expedition so well planned, never romance so well begun. There was poetry in the very noise of the paddles as they dipped in the water; there was music in the ripple of the waves against the canoes; there was heaven in the thought that all day she would be within sight and hearing of this knight, this Lohengrin—or this Siegfried—she was not sure which to call him. If Siegfried, then she was Brunhilde to lose him through unfaithfulness on his part; if Lohengrin, through lack of faith on hers. She sat dreaming in the canoe which Ran was paddling, and was so absorbed that she did not hear him speak till he sprinkled her with a few drops from the paddle.
“What a girl you are, Nan,” he exclaimed. “Lost in dreams, of course.”
“It is so lovely,” sighed Nan, coming back to earth.
“I agree with you, but it would be lovelier if you would speak to a fellow once in a while.”
“Oh, I beg your pardon,” said Nan, flushing up. “I’m very stupid, Ran. I promise not to be such a dreamer again. What were you saying?”
“I was asking if you had decided on your college yet.”
“Oh! Why no, not entirely. My certificate will admit me to any of several, so I am considering, and am not sure which.”
“You are pretty bright to be able to get in at all at your age.”