Still, he wondered that a girl like her should be reading a book of detective tales. She was the sort of a girl he would have expected to see perusing love stories of the "Bertha M. Clay" class.
He longed to get into conversation with her, and yet, for all of the smile with which she had seemed to greet him, something held him back and told him it was not wise to be too forward.
At last she resumed reading again. She did not read long. With a faint, scornful laugh, she dropped the book in her lap.
Frank fancied he saw an opportunity to "break the ice."
"You do not seem to like those stories," he observed.
"They are very amusing, and utterly improbable and impossible," she said.
The boy laughed.
"Then you fancy the author overdrew his hero?" he asked.
"To be sure he did. There is no detective living who can do such astonishing things as this one is credited with. No such detective ever lived."
"Possibly not."