“Very well,” answered the young master of the plantation, amused by the girl’s extraordinary candor and simplicity. “I’ll call you Miss South till you make up your mind about liking or detesting me.”
“Oh, no, not that,” the girl quickly answered. “That would be too grown up. But you might say ‘Miss Dorothy,’ please, till I make up my mind about you.”
“Very well, Miss Dorothy. Allow me to express a sincere hope that after you have come to know what sort of person I am, you’ll like me well enough to bid me drop the handle to your name.”
“But why should you care whether a girl like me likes you or not?”
“Why, because I am very strongly disposed to like a girl like you.”
“How can you feel that way, when you don’t know me the least little bit?”
“But I do know you a good deal more than ‘the least little bit,’ ” answered the young man smiling.
“How can that be? I don’t understand.”
“Perhaps not, and yet it is simple enough. You see I have been training my mind and my eyes and my ears and all the rest of me all my life, into habits of quick and accurate observation, and so I see more at a glance than I should otherwise see in an hour. For example, you’ll admit that I have had no good chance to become acquainted with your hounds, yet I know that one of them has lost a single joint from his tail, and another had a bur inside one of his ears this morning, which you have since removed.”
The girl laid down her fork in something like consternation.