"Of course! Who else?" Susan was nettled now, and showed it. "I don't s'pose you'll deny runnin' here to see him, an' talkin' to him, an'—"
"No, no, wait!—wait! Don't say any more, PLEASE!" The girl was half laughing, half crying, and her face was going from white to red and back to white again. "Am I to understand that I am actually being accused of—of running after Mr. Daniel Burton?—of—of love-making toward HIM?" she choked incoherently.
"Why, y-yes; that is—er——"
"Oh, this is too much, too much! First Keith, and now—" She broke off hysterically. "To think that—Oh, Susan, how could you, how could you!" And this time she dropped into a chair and covered her face with her hands. But she was laughing. Very plainly she was laughing.
Susan frowned, stared, and frowned again.
"Then you ain't in love with—" Suddenly her face cleared, and broke into a broad smile. "Well, my lan', if that ain't the best joke ever! Of course, you ain't in love with him! I don't believe I ever more 'n half believed it, anyway. Now it'll be dead easy, an' all right, too."
"But—but what does it all mean?" stammered the girl.
"Why, it's jest that—that everybody thought you was after him, an't would be a match—you bein' together so much. But even then I wouldn't have said a thing if it hadn't been for Keith."
"Keith!"
"Yes—poor boy, he—an' it WAS hard for him, seein' you two together like this, an' thinkin' you cared for each other. An' he'd got his plans all made how when you was married he'd go an' live with David Patch."