“No,” Ada returned, stoutly. “I wouldn’t. If I were you, I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t even if it were four!”
Lily moaned, and in a hopeless appeal for a higher witness to such folly, cast her eyes to heaven—or at least to as much of the dimming sky as roofed over the tattered brown foliage above her. “You wouldn’t give it a thought! Not even if there were four of ’em.” Then, as the woodland spot where they had stopped was somewhat secluded and apart from the main-travelled roads of the park, Lily felt at liberty to lean against a tree and apply a hand to her forehead in an excellent gesture of anguish. “I’m a goner this time, Ada,” she murmured. “I’m a goner!”
“You aren’t anything of the kind,” Miss Corey assured her. “I tell you it’s not worth bothering about.”
“Oh!” Lily uttered a sound of indignation, dropped the dramatic little hand, and spoke sharply. “You stand there, Ada Corey, and tell me that if such a thing happened to you, you wouldn’t give it a thought?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You did! You just said——”
“No; I said if I were you,” Ada explained. “A thing like this wouldn’t happen to me.”
“Why wouldn’t it? It might happen to anybody,” Lily returned, quickly. “Suppose it did happen to you? Do you mean to tell me that if three separate, individual men all pretty nearly considered themselves practically almost engaged to be married to you at the same time, you wouldn’t give it a thought? You wouldn’t bother about it at all?”
“I said I wouldn’t if I were you,” Ada insisted.
“Why wouldn’t you?”