“It would be a lie to say it didn’t,” laughed Marjorie, good-naturedly. “You know how I adore that sort of thing.”
“Marjorie,” he pursued, “do you think that—that—” he hesitated, as if he did not know how to put his thought—“that sports, and Girl Scouts, and things like that, will always come first with you?”
Marjorie seemed hurt at his words; he was accusing her of being cold and unfeeling.
“I don’t know what you mean!” she returned, sharply. “Do you imply that I care more for things like that than for people? That I like horseback-riding and hiking better than mother and father and Lily—”
“No, no! I didn’t mean that. Of course I know your family and Lily come first. But men, for instance? It seems to me you’d always rather go off with a pack of girls on some escapade than see any of your men friends.”
“Maybe I would,” laughed the girl, heartlessly. “But,” she added, “perhaps I’ll wake up some time!”
“When?” he asked, seriously.
“Maybe when I fall in love!” she returned, teasingly.
John knew that now she had adopted this frivolous manner, it would be useless to pursue the subject further. So he put the thing out of his mind temporarily, forcing himself to talk of other things.
But when, an hour later, he was alone in his room, he made a new resolution. Marjorie had treated him shamefully by not writing to him of her plans, by allowing his hopes to be dashed so rudely to the ground by a third person. It was evident that she did not care for him—that she had never cared, and it was foolish of him to pursue her. In the future, therefore, he meant to treat her with the same polite indifference with which he accorded the other members of her sex; if he was nothing to her, he would show her that she was nothing to him!