"He's an affected idiot!" she exclaimed to herself. "I don't like him one bit!"
"Please like me," said the poet's soft voice, and Patty fairly jumped to realise that he had read her thought in her face.
"Oh, I do!" she said, with mock fervour, and a slight flush of embarrassment at her carelessness. "I like you heaps!"
"Don't be too set up over that," laughed Elise, "for Patty likes everybody. She's the greatest little old liker you ever saw! Why, she even likes people who don't like her."
"Are there such?" asked Blaney, properly.
"Yes, indeed," Patty declared; "and I can't help admiring their good taste."
"I can't either," and Blaney spoke so seriously, that Patty almost gasped.
"That isn't the answer," she smiled; "you should have contradicted me."
"No," the poet went on; "people who don't like you show real discrimination. It is because you are so crude and unformed of soul."
But Patty was too wise to be caught with such chaff.