“Likely,” said Patience, with frowning resignation. “But let’s talk of something more agreeable. Isn’t this perfume heavenly?”
The dark solemn woods were ravishing with the perfumes of spring, the perfume of wild violet and lilac and lily, and the faint sweet odour the damp earth gives up as the sun goes down. From above came the strong bracing scent of the pines. Now and again the wind brought a salt whiff from the ocean. No birds carolled, but the pines sang their eternal dirge.
“What’s your ideal?” demanded Patience.
“Ideal? What ideal?”
“Why, of man, of course.”
“Oh, man!” contemptuously. “I haven’t thought much about men. I don’t read novels like you do. I wish somebody would die and leave me a thousand dollars so I could live in San Francisco and have a new dress every day and go to the theatre every night. Miss Galpin says we mustn’t think about boys, and I don’t—perhaps because the boys in Monterey are so horrid.”
“Boys? Who said anything about boys?” The chrysalis elevated her patrician nose. “I mean men.”
“Well, you’re mean to turn up your nose at boys. They like you a good deal better than they do me, and a good many of the other girls.”
“That’s funny, isn’t it? and I not pretty. But I suppose it’s because I talk. You just sit still and look pretty, and that’s not very entertaining. I read in a novel that men like that; but boys have got to be entertained. Goodness gracious! Don’t I know it? When I was at Manuela’s party the other night in my old washed muslin frock and plaid sash, didn’t I talk my throat sore to make them forget that I was the worst dressed girl in the room and had the most freckles? Of course the girls didn’t forget—nor some other things—” with a bitter lowering of the lids—“but the boys did. Somehow I feel as if men would always be my friends, if I’m not pretty.”
“What do you know about men, anyhow? You’re only fifteen, and you’ve never met any but old Mr. Foord, and the farm hands and store keepers, who,” aristocratically, “don’t count.”