“Mauve, heliotrope,” she tipped them off merrily on her digits. “Amethyst.” She crooked her little finger.
“Don’t,” he groaned.
“Wood-violet.” She waggled the thumb of her other hand.
“Lavender!” He sank back into the seat of the cart like a stone into the sea.
“Or lilac. But it doesn’t match my eyes, Mr. Andrews; no, really, I haven’t lavender eyes.”
She found his error too entertaining and, ceasing her kind attempt at gravity, she bubbled gaily.
“Lavender,” he muttered. He thought with gruelling shame of how he had “bust out,” and added: “I have been indelicate.”
“Oh, why take it so seriously?” she giggled. “I’m not offended. I’m—I’m—laughing.”
He could hear that she was!—but the ripples of her mirth fell balmless upon his wound. His sober, orderly, plodding mind was in a perilous whirl. She had not lured him; she had not been waiting for him, as the desirous feminine awaiteth the superior being. Tradition itself, the perfect tradition of the sexes, was exploding like firecrackers in the little hisses and snickers that went off just above his humbled head. He doubted that he would be able even to “hover” in silence—with his wonted dignity and optimism—for some time to come.
“Lavender,” he repeated. He gathered up the reins, hardly knowing that he did so, and motioned the stocky pony away from the vine-clad walls of Mockery’s citadel.