For a moment they stared at her without reply, then gave each other a few suggestive nudges; and Mrs. Rhamm was about to speak rather slightingly, when good-natured Mrs. Gubling said: "You are very kind, miss, but you don't look cut out for our work. Besides, my dear, it's an orful dangerous place down here. I'm afraid we'll git eat up ourselves before the evening is over. I'm sure you would be, if you stayed. I wouldn't mind taking a bite myself"; and the good woman and her assistants laughed heartily over this standing joke of the evening, while Auntie Lammer, seeing that Mrs. Gubling was the leading spirit of the supper-room, quivered in all her vast proportions with politic and propitious mirth.
All this was inexpressibly funny to Lottie, who had the keenest sense of the absurd, and with a sign to Hemstead she drew him away, saying, "This exceeds any play I ever saw. I didn't know people who were not acting could be so queer and comical."
"Well, Miss Lottie," he said, as they ascended the stairs, "I admit that humanity everywhere often has its ridiculous side, but I have been laughed at too much myself to enjoy laughing at others."
"And why should you be laughed at so much?"
"I suppose it is the fate of overgrown, awkward boys, who have a tendency to blurt out the truth on all occasions."
"Such a tendency as that will always make you trouble, I assure you."
"It hasn't with you, yet."
"Our acquaintance has been very brief."
"And yet I seem to know you so well! I would not have believed it possible in one short day."
"I think you are mistaken. But you have ceased to be a stranger to me. I have remarked before to-day, that I knew you better than some I have seen from childhood."