"You're a boy; I'm a year older than you."
"Eleven months!"
"Anyhow, I'm a woman. I do what I choose, while you're afraid to move for fear uncle will catch you. What would he do, ferule your little palms?"
Furious, Corrie sprang across and dropped his hands on her shoulders with the freedom of their life-long intercourse.
"I'd like to ferule yours," he gritted between his set teeth. "I'm as much a man as you are a woman. You haven't any sense. And there's no use of your dangling after Allan Gerard, for he don't want you—he said as much. I'm going in, and I won't take you around the course."
Gasping, Isabel let him reach the French windows of the drawing-room before recovering herself. Then she rushed in pursuit, tripping impatiently over her long chiffon skirts.
"Corrie—wait! Corrie!"
He turned sullenly, secretly aghast at his own temerity. But Isabel laid her hand on his sleeve without anger.
"You're more man than I thought," she breathed. "I always liked you better than anyone else, anyhow. Corrie, if you'd take me around the course, early in the morning when no one here knew, I believe you'd be almost grown up enough to—to—be engaged."