"We're looking for wild flowers. Do you think we're too early?"
"No, I could have picked some this afternoon if I'd felt like it, but it's a sort o' belief with me that nobody ought to pick wild flowers for himself—ha-ha-ha!—Oh eh, Miss Garnet, I reckon I owe you an apology for charging down on you this way, but I just happened to think, after I passed you, that you could tell me where to find your father. He's president pro tem. of our land company, you know, and I want to consult him with Mr. Gamble—you know Mr. Gamble, don't you?—president of the railroad? O! of course you do! Well, he's our vice-president."
"Why, no, Mr. March, I don't know where you'll find pop-a right now. I might possibly know when I get back to the house. If it's important I could send you word."
"O no! O no! Not at all! I'll find him easily enough. I hope you'll both pardon me, Miss Fannie, but it seems as if I learned some things pow'ful slow. I ought to know by this time when two's company and three's a crowd."
Before he had finished, the two listeners had seen the remoter significance of his words, and it was to mask this that Barbara drawled—
"Why, Mr. March, that's not nice of you!"
But the young man's confusion was sufficient apology, and both girls beamed kindly on him as he presently took his leave under the delusion that his face hid his inward mortification.