"You did bite me once, though," she said airily.
"And you've never forgiven me for it," he asserted, in deepest self-pity.
"Oh, yes, I have; the Dabneys always forgive—but they never forget. And me, I am a Dabney."
"That's just as bad. You wouldn't be so awful mean to me if you knew. I—I'm going away."
She came a little nearer at that and sat down beside him on the yellow grass with an arm around the dog's neck.
"Does it hurt?" she asked. "Because, if it does, I'm sorry; and I'll promise to forget."
"It does hurt some," he confessed. "Because, you see, I'm going to be a preacher."
"You?" she said, with the frank and unsympathetic surprise of childhood. Then politeness came to the rescue and she added: "I'm sorry for that, too, if you are wanting me to be. Only I should think it would be fine to wear a long black robe and a pretty white surplice, and to learn to sing the prayers beautifully, and all that."
Thomas Jefferson was honestly horrified, and he looked it.
"I'd like to know what in the world you're talking about," he said.