“I’ll be perfectly frank with you, Ken. It’s just because that locket with your picture in it was too,—well, too personal a sort of present for you to give me, or for me to wear.”
“You took it!”
“Yes; after I’d asked father, and he told me I might, but you know I went away with Elise then, to Paris, and every time she saw it she pretended that it meant a great deal more than it did. Of course, it was only a token of our boy and girl friendship, but she chose to pretend it meant romance and sentiment and all those things.”
“But since it meant and still means our boy and girl friendship, I think you might wear it sometimes.”
“I see I’ll have to tell you the whole story,” said Patty, with a little sigh. “Well, last Christmas Elise bought a seal ring for Roger, and then, at the last minute, she decided she’d like to give it to you, and she asked my advice about it. I told her it was too personal a present for a girl to give a young man, and I didn’t think she ought to do it. It wasn’t that I didn’t want her to give you a nice present, but I didn’t think it looked right for her to give you that kind of a one. I told her to get you books, or something like that.”
“What’s all this got to do with the locket?”
“Why, Elise said that I needn’t talk about personal presents, after I had accepted from you a locket with your picture in it. And so I told her that that was very different, as we were old friends, and, anyhow, I had only worn it once or twice. But I didn’t say I didn’t care anything for it.”
Kenneth’s face cleared, and he turned toward Patty with an honest, beaming smile.
“It’s all right, Patty; I see through it now. Elise did try to make me think you had said something mean, but you didn’t, and I felt sure you hadn’t.”
“You didn’t feel quite sure, Ken.”