“Well, if you can read my mind, it’s no use me trying to talk,” said he.
“I never asked you to talk!”
They were both aware that their badinage had lost its fine edge.
“Well, I never asked you to listen,” Mr. Ritchie said valiantly, but he knew very well that this was not a clever retort.
At that moment he was greatly dissatisfied both with his wit and his person. He thought it brutal on the part of fate that a young man as passionate and resolute as himself should have so frail a form, and that after having taken a correspondence course in rhetoric and oratory he should still be so tongue-tied—especially with Madeline.
He could see himself in the mirror opposite. He sat so straight that he leaned over backward a little, but this did not disguise the fact that his shoulders were narrow and not quite even, and his chest somewhat hollow. Neither had his studies or his burning thoughts left any visible impress on his sallow, rather ratlike face; and all this hurt his terribly sensitive soul.
“I never said you were a jazz baby,” he insisted. “I only said lots of girls were—and that’s a fact. Why, a lot of those girls wouldn’t spend a cent to get a decent, well balanced meal! All they care about is clothes and—”
“I don’t guess you know such a lot about girls,” Madeline interrupted.
Her tone was scornful, and the outrageously sensitive Mr. Ritchie at once saw all sorts of implications. She meant that girls wouldn’t bother with him. She meant that he was nothing but a mechanic. She meant that his clothes were shabby, and that he was small and slight. She meant everything that could affront his manly pride.
His face grew crimson.