"Please, Lloyd," he asked again, in a low, earnest tone.
"I—I can't, Malcolm," she stammered, giving the nut she had chosen a sudden blow that completely smashed it.
"Why not? You gave Rob the clover to carry in his watch."
"That was different. Rob doesn't care for the clovah on my account. He carries it for the good luck it brings; not because I gave it to him."
"But he'll get to caring after awhile," said Malcolm, moodily. "He couldn't help it. Nobody could who knew you, and I don't want him to." Then, after a long pause in which Lloyd attended so strictly to her nut-cracking that she did not even glance in his direction, he asked, jealously: "Would you give him the curl if he asked for it?"
Something in his tone made Lloyd look up with a provoking little smile. "No," she answered, "not even the snippiest little snip of a hair, if he asked for it the way you are doing, and wanted it to mean what you do—that he was my—my chosen knight, you know."
"Is there anybody you would give it to, Lloyd?"
His persistence only made her shake her head the more obstinately. It did not take much teasing to arouse what Mom Beck called "the Lloyd stubbo'ness."
"No! I tell you! And if you keep on talking that way I'm going home!"
"Why won't you let me talk that way? This is the last time I'll see you until next summer, and I'm dreadfully in earnest, Lloyd. You don't know how much it means to me. Don't you care for me at all?"