"To think you should tip me over, on top of making love to me! O Burleigh! it is too awfully droll for any thing! It is the funniest thing I ever heard of. Oh, dear!"
"I don't see where the fun comes in," he returned, rather crossly. "You always laugh at me."
"Oh, I don't either, but now I can't help it! Don't look so solemn, or you'll kill me!"
Her escort was hurt and angry. He felt that she flouted him and his love, and in this he did her injustice. Chagrin at his rejection, and mortification at the accident, combined to render him morbidly sensitive. Besides, he could not know that this lovely girl before him with flushed cheeks and tumbled hair was laughing as much from nervousness as from fun, and that the words of Tom Putnam on the previous night were as much a motive power in this extravagant cachinnation as his own proposal.
"I will help you into the buggy," he said stiffly.
"Don't be cross," she said, rising with the aid of the hand he extended. "I am sorry I vexed you. I was horrid to laugh so. We are good friends again, and for always, are we not?"
But in that moment of mortification had unconsciously dawned in the mind of Burleigh Blood the knowledge, that, however great might be his friendship for Patty, he did not love her. It is true that it was some time before he appreciated the discovery; but he was inclined to be very silent on the homeward way, although his companion used her utmost endeavors to restore him to good humor.