“Then you think there was nothing so very bad about what I said?”
“It was thoughtless—I do not know what it was. There was certainly nothing bad in it, and besides, you did not mean it, you know, did you?”
“Then why do you want to go away?” inquired Mamie, with feminine logic, and candour.
“Why because——” George stopped as people often do, at that word, well knowing what he had been about to say, but now suddenly unwilling to say it. In fact, to say anything under the circumstances would have been a flagrant breach of tact. Since Mamie almost admitted that she had meant nothing, she had only been making fun of him and he could not well think of going away without seeming ridiculous in his own eyes.
“’Because,’ without anything after it, is only a woman’s reason,” said the young girl with a laugh.
“Women’s reasons are sometimes the best. At all events, I have often heard you say so.”
“I am often laughing at you, when I seem most in earnest, George. Have you never noticed that I have a fine talent for irony? Do you think that if I were very much in love with you, I would tell you so? How conceited you must be!”
“No indeed!” George asseverated. “I would not imagine that you could do such a thing. When I told you I would go away, I was only entering into the spirit of the thing and carrying on your idea.”
“It was very well done. I cannot help laughing at the serious face you made.”
“Nor I, at yours,” said the young man beginning to pull the boat slowly about.