“I’ll miss you, too, Flo dear. We’ve had good times together, haven’t we?”
“Yes, indeed; I’ll tell Lady Kitty all about it when I go back. I wish she could have been here with us.”
“Yes, I hoped to have her; but I find she’s a most uncertain personage. ‘But what’s the use of repining? to-morrow the sun may be shining!’”
“That’s just you, all over, Patty! I believe whoever composed that classic couplet must have known you. Do you never repine?”
“To tell you the awful truth, Flo, I don’t quite know what that word means! Re-pine, I daresay, is to pine again. But you see I don’t know how to pine the first time.”
“Oh, Patty, you’re a silly. But I can tell you Mr. Peter Homer is going to do some pining after you.”
“Really! Oh, Flo, how you embarrass me. I don’t know where to hide my blushing face.”
Saucy Patty was not embarrassed a bit, and Flo well knew it. But Flo had felt ever so tiny a tinge of jealousy at the evident interest Mr. Homer took in Patty, and she couldn’t resist speaking of it.
“Don’t you care, Patty, if he ‘pines’ for you?”
“I can’t conscientiously say that I do,” remarked Patty, with a judicial air. “He’s free to pine if he enjoys it, I’m sure.”