Aunt Abby looked surprised.
“I hope you weren’t really saucy,” she answered, “that wouldn’t have been becoming.”
Mr. Goodnow appeared next day, not at all disturbed, and Chip, a little more gracious, consented to gather lilies with him. The leaky punt that had served for that purpose many years was bailed out. He manned the oars. Chip bared one rounded arm, and, thus equipped, two really enjoyable hours were passed.
As Uncle Jud had said, he was a “slick talker.” Truth was not considered by him; instead, subtile flatteries were his stock in trade, and Chip, for the first time in her life, felt their insidious influence. She was in no wise deceived. Her woman’s wit and good sense detected the sham, and caring not one whit for him, she responded as saucily as she chose. It was not, perhaps, quite ladylike, but Chip was not as yet a polished lady; instead, she was a decidedly blunt-spoken girl who enjoyed exasperating this fashionable Lothario.
And never before had he met her like or one so fearless of speech.
“You are the sauciest girl I have ever had the pleasure of meeting,” he said, as they drew up to the landing and began sorting the lilies. “I didn’t notice it so much last summer; and yet you are no less charming, mainly because you are so frank. Most ladies whom I know are not so. They are arrant hypocrites and not one assertion in ten can be taken at its face value.”
“You seem to have been an apt scholar,” Chip responded, smiling. “If you like my blunt speech, as you say, why don’t you imitate it and be truthful for once in your life?”
“I dare not. No man ever yet won a woman’s favor by plain speech.”
“And so you want my favor. What for? I am not of your sort. I do not spend my life playing golf and tennis and wearing fine clothes.”
“But you ought to. You have the face and form required, and once you got into the swim of society, you would become a leader.”