Sydney laughed outright.
"How do you know but what he meant the boys, too?" he asked. She looked at him with an assumption of surprise. "A girl never makes such a mistake as that," she said. "It was a very pretty compliment."
"Worthy of O'Hara," he put in.
"Worthy of Mr. Livingston," she declared. "O'Hara's compliments are not so delicate. They are beautifully worded, but unconvincing."
"I believe she's actually giving you credit for extreme honesty!" exclaimed Carter.
"I sincerely trust so," replied his friend heartily. "It would be a most pleasing compliment."
"Well, I should say it would be the biggest one she ever paid anyone! You're the first one Hope ever credited with honesty. You can sit for an hour and tell her a great long story and she'll never give you the satisfaction of knowing for sure whether she believes you or not. The chances are she don't. She'll take your assertions, weigh every word, and then draw her own conclusions."
"You only know from your own experience," demurred Hope. "All people haven't your habit of departing from the truth, you know." Then to Livingston: "Really, he can tell a terrible whopper with the straightest face imaginable! He only proves to you how well I know him. Last summer he told a girl a ridiculous story about snakes. It was her first visit at the ranch, and for several days I thought something was the matter with her brain. Every time she heard a grasshopper buzz anywhere near she would give a shriek and turn deathly pale. She finally told me that she feared rattlesnakes because Sydney had told her that that particular buzz was the snake's death rattle and that something or somebody was doomed for sure, that if the snake couldn't get the human victim it had set its eyes upon, it crept into a prairie-dog hole and got one of them. Of course that is only a sample of his very foolish yarns, which no one but an ignorant person would think of believing."
"I remember," laughed Sydney. "That was that fair Lily Cresmond. She got up and had breakfast with me at six o'clock this morning. Poor girl! I'm afraid I've put my foot in it this time!"
"For goodness' sake, did she propose to you?" asked Hope, aghast.