Then she followed Hodge and ran him down back where the shadows were thickest. She grasped him with both hands.
“Look here, Bart Hodge!” she exclaimed; “do you think I’m going to eat you up? or what ails you? You run away from me as if you regarded me as a snake!”
Hodge stood there, silent, looking at her. She gave him a shake.
“Stop it!” she cried. “I’m tired of it! I don’t like it! I won’t have it! Will you be good enough, Mr. Bart Hodge, to treat me differently?”
“I don’t know,” he said, obstinately. “Why should I?”
“Why shouldn’t you?”
“There is every reason why I shouldn’t.”
“Name a few of them.”
“To begin with, you regard me as a mere boy—a stripling who does not know his own mind. You insulted me when I told you of my admiration for you. You laughed at me. You might as well have said ‘calf love.’ I won’t stand for that kind of treatment from you or any other woman!”
She did not laugh at him now, for he was beginning to realize that he could not be treated like a boy. She could not flatter and flirt with him as she did with Billy Wynne. His admiration for her was not of the sort to endure that kind of cajolery.