"Don't you ever feel that you'd like to get outside of it yourself? The world's a big place."
For the first time she appeared attentive to his words.
"I've often wondered what it was like—especially the cities—New York,
Paris, London. Paris is the best, isn't it?"
"Yes, Paris is the best to me. Have you ever thought that you'd like to wear pretty gowns and drive through a green park in the spring—filled with other carriages in which are wonderful women?"
"But I'd feel so miserable and countrified," she answered. "Are they any happier than I am—those wonderful women?"
"Perhaps not so happy—there's a green-eyed dragon gnawing at the hearts of most of them, and you, my nut-brown beauty, have never felt his fangs."
"I'd like to see them," she said after a minute, and moved slowly onward.
"Some day you may. Look here, Molly," he burst out impulsively, "I'm not going to be sentimental about you. I haven't the least idea of making love to you—I've had enough of that sort of rot, God knows—but I do like you tremendously, and I want to stand to you as a big brother. I never had a sister, you know," he added.
Something earnest and tender in his voice touched her generosity, which overflowed so easily.
"And I never had a brother," she rejoined.