She addressed smiles slightly.
“Why? What would you rather I did?” she says. “You generally say it’s too hot to stroll in the morning.”
“Do I? Well, perhaps it is. But you were looking so preternaturally solemn, and so silent, that I believe you were thinking of—some one. Who was it? Come, out with it!”
“You shouldn’t judge everybody from your own standpoint, Violet,” is the good-humoured reply. “Now, my private opinion is you are developing quite a fidgety vein because we only get a post here once a week.”
A close observer, watching the countenance of her thus bantered, might have thought there was a hit underlying this perfectly innocent remark, but if so it escaped the speaker, for she never looked up from her sewing.
“Ha, ha, ha! Oh, wise Marian. The post, indeed! You should see the cartload of astonishing effusions I get. I believe I will let you see them one of these days. They’d astonish you considerably, if only as evidence of what a lot of idiots there are among men. No; your sagacity is at fault. You haven’t hit the right nail this time.”
“Don’t you get rather tired of that kind of fun?” said Marian, biting off the end of her thread. “I should have thought there was a great deal of sameness in it.”
“Sameness! So there is. But what is one to do? I can’t help it. I don’t ask them to come swarming round me. They do it. I see a man for the first time to-day, forget his very existence to-morrow, and the day after that he tells me he can’t live without me. It isn’t my fault. Now, is it?”
“Since you ask me, I tell you I firmly believe it is. You’re a hard-hearted little—wretch, and one of these days you’ll find your own wings singed—mark my words.”
“A truce to your platitudes,” laughed the other. “I’ve heard that said so often—and—sometimes I almost wish it would come true. It would be such a novel sensation.”