The man smiled. “The Clever Betsy,” he said musingly. They regarded one another for a silent moment. “Why ain’t ye ever clever to me?”
She sniffed.
“Why don’t ye fat up some?” he asked again.
“If I was as lazy as you are, probably I should,” she returned, with the sidewise grimace appearing again, and the breeze from the wide ocean a stone’s throw away ruffling the sparse straight locks that escaped from her headdress.
“Goin’ to marry me this time, Betsy?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Same old reason.”
“But I tell ye,” said the man, in half-humorous, half-earnest appeal, “I’ve told ye a dozen times I didn’t know which I liked best then. If you’d happened to go home from singin’-school with me that night it would ’a’ ben you.”