“Perhaps I’m not. But,” impulsively, “perhaps I will some day. I hate being locked up like a tin box with papers in it. We’ve been here two weeks—at the Palace Hotel before we came to Mrs. Hayne’s—and my head fairly aches thinking of everything I say before I say it. I hate this old California. Father won’t present any letters, and the boys I’ve met are cads. But I like you!”
“Oh, tell me!” cried Lee. Her eyes blazed and she hopped excitedly on one foot. “It’s like a real story. Tell me!”
“I’ll have to know you better. I must be sure I can trust you.” He had all at once assumed a darkly mysterious air. “I’ll walk every morning to school with you, and in the afternoons we’ll sit in the drawing-room and talk.”
“I never tell secrets. I know lots!”
“I’ll wait a week.”
“Well; but I think it’s horrid of you. And I can’t come down this afternoon; my mother is ill. But to-morrow I have a holiday, and if you like you can come up and see me at two o’clock; and you shall carry my bag every morning to school.”
“Indeed!” He threw up his head like a young racehorse.
“You must,”—firmly. “Else you can’t come. I’ll let some other boy carry it.” Lee fibbed with a qualm, but not upon barren soil had the maternal counsel fallen.
“Oh—well—I’ll do it; but I ought to have offered. Girls ought not to tell boys what to do.”
“My mother always told her husband and brothers and cousins to do everything she wanted, and they always did it.”