"Nor you like a silly, sentimental girl. 'Kill things!' Don't you ever eat fish? Or beef? or dear little gentle chickens?" demanded this teasing lad, as he quieted his horse and prepared to mount, though at the same time managing to keep that animal so directly in Dorothy's path that she had to stand still for a moment till he should move aside.
She frowned, then laughed, acknowledging:
"Of course I do. I mean I have; but—seems to me now as if I never would again."
"Well, I'm sorry; and—Good-morning, Miss Chester!"
Away he went, lifting his hat in the direction of the people ahead, looking an extremely handsome young fellow in his riding clothes, and sitting the fiery Bucephalus with such ease that lad and steed seemed but part and parcel of each other. Yet his whole manner was now one of disapproval, and the acquaintance which had begun so pleasantly seemed destined to prove quite the contrary.
"He's a horrid, cruel boy! Kills birds and things just for fun! He isn't half as nice as Jim Barlow, for all he's so much better looking and richer. Poor Jim! He felt so ashamed to have made everybody so much trouble. I wish—I wish he'd come with us instead of that Herbert:" thought the little maid so unceremoniously deserted by her new friend.
"She's just a plain, silly, 'fraid-cat of a girl, after all!" were the reflections of the young horseman, as he galloped away, and with these he dismissed her from his mind.
Now it happened that Mrs. Calvert liked young folks much better than she did old ones, and the conversation which she had rendered so delightful to Mrs. Chester, during that homeward walk, was far less interesting to herself than the fragments of talk which reached her from the girl and boy behind her. So when the hoofs of Bucephalus clattered away in an opposite direction, she turned to Dorothy and mischievously inquired:
"What's the matter, little girl? Isn't he the sort of boy you like? You don't look pleased."
Dorothy's frown vanished as she ran forward to take the hand held toward her and she answered readily enough, as she put herself "in step" with her elders: