"I could irritate you more if I wanted to."
"I'm perfectly willing to take that for granted."
Just as they reached the post office they met the Chambers' car piled with a full luggage equipment. Albert Chambers sat in lonely state within, looking neither to right nor left.
"He didn't go back to dinner, after all," Elizabeth thought, "or at any rate, he didn't stay."
Buddy made no comment on this encounter, but he walked composedly through the crowd overflowing the little building, his head held high, and all the colour drained from his white face. He even insisted on stopping at the drug store and regaling Elizabeth with her favourite marshmallow and maple nut sundae, though he refused all refreshment for himself.
"One thing that the life over there taught you was that you've got to get through every day somehow," he said, thoughtfully. "I wish ice-cream soda didn't drip so much. There's a row of pink rings and chocolate rings all along this counter. I don't like them."
"He thinks everything is perfectly horrid," Elizabeth said to herself, "and yet he doesn't give in. Oh, I think he's perfectly splendid!"
They made a detour and came out by the Flatiron field, where the station road divided itself into two separate byways in the crux of which was a letter box. Ruth Farraday was in the act of mailing a letter there. It dropped inside as Elizabeth and Buddy approached.
"I was just mailing you a letter," Ruth said.