"Don't be a dunce, Reed," she besought him. "You merely are the latest sensation in returning prodigals; you haven't sufficient staying power to become a charity, or even a fad. Then I shall tell the sympathetic lady—?"
"To go to everlasting thunder," Reed growled ungratefully. "Hang it all, Olive, does she think I want a row of hens coming to cluck above the ruins?"
"Which reminds me," Olive rose; "when do you look for the conjugal rooster?"
"Brenton? Sit down again; you're not in any hurry," Reed urged her.
But she shook her head.
"No; but I am a hen, and nobody knows when I may forget myself and begin to cluck. No. Truly, Reed, my feelings are injured and I'm going home."
"What's the use? You've nothing in the world to do."
"I beg your pardon, I have domestic cares. My blessed father has to go to Boston at two-twenty. If I don't go home in season to arouse him to the practical details inherent in the fact, he'll be starting off in slippers and without his evening clothes. Really, Reed, I've got to go."
"What are you going to do, this afternoon?" Reed's eyes were wishful, for the time was hanging heavy in his idle hands. "Of course, though, there's no sense in my being selfish."
Olive saw the wishfulness; but she ignored it. Both Professor Opdyke and her father had told her that Reed's sentence was a long one, long and heavy. Both Mrs. Opdyke and her husband had begged the girl to do what she could to keep it from seeming too much like solitary confinement. Olive was fond of Reed, though without the consciousness of a single vein of sentiment to blur their friendship. She enjoyed his society as much as she admired his virile, easy-going manliness. All the more, on this account, she was sure that the only way of keeping their friendship and their enjoyment keen would lie in avoiding any surfeit. For herself, she felt no uneasiness. Reed's society, under no circumstances, could become cloying. But for Reed she did not know. The idler the hands, the sooner they weary of any toy. And poor Reed's hands, in all surety, were very, very idle. Moreover, unless she went out greedily in search of fresh variety, how could she bring it into his present prison? If she spent too much time with him, inevitably they would exhaust their fund of gossip. Then they would be driven into becoming autobiographical, and that would be the finish of their present friendship. Therefore,—