"Of course. But in what way do you mean?"
"About Dick Burden. He doesn't think I'm flirting, and he doesn't think I care for him. Yet I want you to trust me, and not say anything to him or to his aunt. Let Dick and me fight it out between us."
He laughed again. "With all my heart, if you want to fight. But I won't have you annoyed. If he annoys you he must go. I will get rid of him."
"Dick can't annoy me if he doesn't make trouble for me with you, Sir Lionel," I said. (And that was the truth.) "Only, if you'll just trust me to manage him?"
"You're very young to undertake the management of a man."
"Dick isn't a man. He's a boy."
"And you—are a child."
"I may seem a child to you," I said, "but I'm not. I'll be so happy, and I'll thank you so much, if you'll just let things go on as they are for a little while. You'll be glad afterward if you do."
And he will, when I've gone and Ellaline has come. He will be glad he didn't give himself too much trouble on my account. But I'm not going to think now of what his opinion of me may be then. At present he has a very good, kind opinion. Even though I am a child in his eyes, I am a dear child; and though it can't last, it does make me happy to be dear to him, in any way at all—this terrible Dragon of Ellaline's.
But that isn't the end of our conversation. The real end was an anti-climax, perhaps, but I liked it. For that matter, the tail of a comet's an anti-climax.