"Perhaps she'd be mad," Ena admitted, "because it is true. If it weren't she'd only laugh. You're a simple Simon not to see. Everybody else with eyes does see. And they'll all be sorry for her if you don't speak."
"
Any one would think I was a dog and she was a bone," growled Petro. "Speak, indeed! I wish you'd mind your own business, Ena."
"I am minding it as hard as I can," said his sister, "and you ought to thank me for taking an interest in yours, too. Don't you like poor little Lady Eileen?"
"Very much; same way she likes me. We're good chums."
"If you don't believe what I say, Petro, there's a splendid way of finding out. Ask her."
"See here, my dear girl, haven't you got anything better to do this morning than to loll all over my sofa and talk drivel when I want to write a letter blowing up somebody? I felt a fool when you came in. Now you've made me feel a double-dyed idiot. Kindly go away and dig a hole in the ground with yourself."
Ena went. But she felt that, despite discouragement, she had already dug a tiny, tiny hole in very hard ground, not for herself, but for a little seed which might perhaps send out its shoots later.
It did not precisely do that; but as the ground raked over was Petro's heart, the seed his sister had left made him uncomfortable. It burned and stung and felt alive, and something had to be done about it.
Of course Ena was wrong. He was the last fellow in the world a girl could care for. He had learned that to his sorrow. A girl couldn't even like him. There was something about him that bored her nearly to death as soon as she began to know him fairly well, and made her want to bolt. He was as sure, he told himself, of the exact nature of nice little Lady Eileen's feeling for him as of his for her. Nevertheless, that night at a dance,