"Oh, I don't!" she answered. "I like it. It sounds so much more polite than to say I was flirting and being fast."
"Were you flirting?" he inquired coldly.
He objected to her ready serenity very much.
She looked a little puzzled.
"You are very like aunt Belinda," she said.
He drew himself up. He did not think there was any point of resemblance at all between Miss Belinda and himself.
She went on, without observing his movement.
"You think every thing means something, or is of some importance. You said that just as aunt Belinda says, 'What will they think?' It never occurs to me that they'll think at all. Gracious! Why should they?"
"You will find they do," he said.
"Well," she said, glancing at the group gathered under the laburnum-tree, "just now aunt Belinda thinks we had better go over to her; so, suppose we do it? At any rate, I found out that I was too complaisant to Mr. Poppleton."