“Hampered! Oh, Patty!”
“You wouldn’t,—but your work would. I see it more clearly than you do. All you think of is to get me to go with you. But you don’t realise how it would bother you to have me along. Why, I doubt if you’d be allowed to take me, anyway.”
“Maybe I wouldn’t,” and Farnsworth frowned. “But, then, how can I leave you? Oh, my little Posy Face, you don’t know yet what you mean to me! And,—after I’m gone,—you’d—Patty! you’d flirt,—you know you would!”
“Oh, no! no!” and the big blue eyes were full of mock horror. “Oh, no, I’d take the veil and do nothing but weep until you came back.”
“You little rascal,—how you do love to tease me!”
And as a matter of fact, Patty did. Whole-hearted, single-hearted, her love was all Farnsworth’s—once and forever, but her gay nature made her love to play on his big, honest sensitive heart as on a lute.
“I do,” she said, calmly, as she twined her little pink fingers into his big, strong ones, “because you take teasing so beautifully!”
“Scallywag! I think I’ll just grab you up and carry you off,—willy-nilly!”
“I never did know what willy-nilly means, and I’d love to find out.”
“You’ll find out when you’re my wife! I expect you to obey my lightest word! I shall be a regular caveman!”