"This is what I've been longing for all day," said he.
I hadn't; and I was thinking about the cadets. But I agreed that it was beautiful.
"Yes, it is," he answered, looking at me. "I never saw anything so pretty. Say, Lady Betty, you're an awful flirt."
I did open my eyes at that. "A flirt!" I exclaimed. "I never had a chance to try being it."
"I guess you don't need to try. There's some things girls like you are born knowing. I've been miserable all the afternoon. Couldn't you see my agony?"
"I didn't notice," said I.
"Ah, that's the trouble. You weren't thinking of me. Of course, I oughtn't to have cared for those little boys," (some of them were inches taller than he) "but I couldn't help it. I kept saying inside, 'This is a foretaste of what I've got to suffer when she's staying with Katherine at The Moorings.' I don't know when I've been so unpopular with myself. I don't see how I'm going to get along unless you'll be nice to me; right now."
"I am nice to you," I said. "As nice as I know how to be."
"I could teach you to be a lot nicer. Say, Lady Betty, let me, won't you?"
His eyes, though they are such a pale blue, had that silly, melting look in them that my cousin Loveland's have when he talks to me. "Let you do what?" I asked, almost snappishly, for a person sitting in such a lovely place.