“I've promised to go and stay with Joe at Maggie Hall.”
“Look here,” he said. “I expect to row in the Trinity boat. Will you and your mother and—and Miss Joe—watch the racing from our barge, one afternoon anyway? Then you could come to tea in my rooms afterward, and I'll ask the other fellows in to meet you.”
“The parson and the policeman and the gas-man, and—and—Eliza Thick?”
“Yes. They're all splendid chaps, I know you'll like them.”
“Well,” she murmured, “I dare say Eliza Thick would be all right in his proper costume. I shall never forget his nest-building genius! Now I understand what he meant by all that talk about counterfeiters.”
“You will come to the Trinity barge?” he begged.
There was a pause. A dropping coal clicked in the grate, and Kathleen's small slipper tapped on the fender.
“I should think,” she said, “that a man as persistent as you would make a good oar. I'm glad the others aren't Americans, too. It was bad enough as it was!”
“Miss Kathleen,” he pleaded, “I guess I can't make you understand what I'd like to. But if you'll just come punting up the Cher, on Sunday in Eights Week, there are so many things I'd like to tell you.”
“Yes, I've always wanted to hear about America, and the difference between a Republican and a Democrat.”