She challenged him: “Am I one of ‘any of you’?”
He did not yield. “Well, then—anything on earth that even you can say.” “You don’t in the least know what I can say—or what I mean to.”
“Don’t I, generally?”
She gave him this point, but only to make another. “Yes; but this is particularly. I want to say.... Owen, you’ve been admirable all through.”
He broke into a laugh in which the odd elder-brotherly note was once more perceptible.
“Admirable,” she emphasized. “And so has she.”
“Oh, and so have you to her!” His voice broke down to boyishness. “I’ve never lost sight of that for a minute. It’s been altogether easier for her, though,” he threw off presently.
“On the whole, I suppose it has. Well——” she summed up with a laugh, “aren’t you all the better pleased to be told you’ve behaved as well as she?”
“Oh, you know, I’ve not done it for you,” he tossed back at her, without the least note of hostility in the affected lightness of his tone.
“Haven’t you, though, perhaps—the least bit? Because, after all, you knew I understood?”