"Oh, your grave and reverend senior airs won't go down with me, you know." He sniffed suspiciously. "Some one has been having a whiff here this morning."
"It wasn't I."
"Well, it was somebody; and some one more critical than I is liable to drop in here and notice it. Just to save you trouble, I'll light up. Better take one. It's your golden opportunity."
Again he offered the case, and now Kathleen took a cigarette mechanically. She still questioned her brother's debonair countenance.
"Well," he said impatiently, after a moment of silence, "are we going to stand here until dinner-time like two tenpins?"
"Are you going to stay until dinner-time?"
"Why," with another effort at gayety, "if you go on like this and positively won't take no for an answer, perhaps I shall be obliged to. Say, Kath, what's the matter with you? You used to be a good fellow. College has ruined you. I didn't treat you like this when you came to see me."
"Forgive me, Edgar," Kathleen's drawl became very nearly an exclamation. "I was thinking so hard."
She dropped into a chair and he lighted his cigarette, and bending forward allowed her to draw the flame into her own.
"Now, this is something like it," remarked the young man, sinking upon a leather-covered divan. He picked up a guitar that lay at its head, and strummed lightly upon it. "Think of your giving house-room to anything so light-minded as a guitar!" he added, his disapproving eyes roving about the entire apartment. "This room looks more like a hermit's cell every time I come."