"Solvei!" snapped Mrs. Tome Gallien, "I am dreadfully afraid that I am going to like you! But before I actually commit myself," she frowned, "I want to ask you one question. Are you in the habit of letting strange young men kiss you?"
"What?" jumped Solvei.
Very significantly Mrs. Tome Gallien repeated the question. "Strange young men?" she revised it. "Are you in the habit of letting strange young men kiss you?"
"Oh!" flushed Solvei. "It is then the Young Doctor that you mean? Was it so that he thus confessed it to you?" she questioned a bit bewilderedly. "So shamed he was, so worried, I had not just thought that he should tell. Yes, it is as you say he is one most strange young man."
"Yes, but you?" persisted Mrs. Tome Gallien. "How did you feel about it? That's what I want to know!"
"How should I feel?" laughed Solvei. 139"Why it was so mad I was, so strong, I could have crushed him on the steps! And then suddenly I see his face! Bah!" shrugged Solvei. "I have one father and nine brothers and all the world is most full of men! It is not from such a face as the Young Doctor's that any evil should come. It is just as I have said, one very sad accident!"
"It does not seem to be just the sadness of the accident that lingers longest in your mind," drawled Mrs. Tome Gallien.
With her chin tip-tilted and her eyes like stars the girl met the sarcasm without a flicker of resentment.
"No!" she laughed. "It is not the sadness of the accident that remains longest in the mind!"
"U-m-mmmm," mused Mrs. Tome Gallien. "All the same," she resumed with sharpness, "I certainly think it was most cruel, most brutal of him, not to make the trip down here with me! It would have done him good," she insisted. "Just the mere balmy change of it! He is so grim!"