“Oh, you think you’re like unto a flower?”
“I’ll be any kind of a flower you wish, if you’ll hover around me like a butterfly.”
“Well, be a timid little forget-me-not,—that will be lovely.”
“I’ll forget-you-not, all right; but I can’t be timid, it isn’t my nature.” And now they had stopped dancing, and stood in the hall, near the door, for it was almost time for Farnsworth to go.
“It isn’t because I’m timid,” and the six feet three of humanity towered above her, “that I don’t grab you up and run away with you, but because——”
“Well, because what?” said Patty, daringly.
“Because, Apple Blossom,” and Bill spoke slowly, “when I see you here in your rightful setting, and surrounded by your own sort of people, I realise that I’m only a great, big——”
“Bear,” interrupted Patty. “You are like a big bear, Bill! But such a nice, gruff, kind, woolly bear,—and the best friend a girl ever had. But I wish you’d be more of a chum, Little Billee. I like to be good chums with every one of my suitors! It’s all very well for Christine to marry; she doesn’t care for society, she just only loves Mr. Hepworth.”
“Some day you’ll forget your love for society, because you’ll get to love just only one man.”
“‘And it might as well be you,’” hummed Patty, to an old tune.