She had also fixed her hair differently and more in the prevailing fashion. The girls of New York she had noticed wore their hair “up,” and as Dorothy was eighteen, she thought she too must dress it like they did. So carefully this afternoon did she arrange it, with three little curls at her neck and a tiny curl just peeping out at each ear. It made her look a little older and very fascinating indeed. Decidedly Jim so thought, as he turned to look at her as she entered the room.
“Come here and sit down. I want to talk to you just a few minutes, dear,” he said, drawing up a chair close to his for her.
Dorothy obeyed, as some way she always was accustomed to obeying this boy, although he was really only five years older than she was. “What is it you want to say?” she asked, seating herself leisurely.
“It’s about what happened this afternoon,” Jim began, and hesitated, hardly knowing how to continue. Looking at Dorothy he thought that she too had changed since the afternoon; she seemed more fair, more grown up, as if she had become a full grown woman instead of a child.
“Dear, I am sorry for what I said and did. I can’t make any excuses, I just lost control. The thought of your going away maddened me. I can’t help loving you, caring for you. I have done that now for years. I didn’t mean to speak to you until I had made good. And now I have spoiled it all by my recklessness,” he added, bitterly.
Then quickly changing his tone of voice to a more cheerful one, he continued: “Dear, never mind, we can be the same old friends again, can’t we?”
“Yes, and no, Jim,” quietly responded Dorothy, who had already felt a complete change that before she didn’t realize and even now didn’t understand.
Jim seized her hands and asked hurriedly, “Could you love me? Could you? You don’t know how much I would give for just one little word of hope. Don’t leave me back here in New York, working, fighting, all by myself with no word of cheer. Answer me girl, answer me. Could you care, not as much as I do, now, but just a little?”
“Jim, I do, a little,” was all she could manage to say before she was seized eagerly in his arms again and having kisses showered upon her hair, cheeks and lips.