"I might have said the same of you a few months ago." Brant was getting red.
"So you might. But I 'm a girl."
"Does my being a man--I'm twenty-four--make it a foregone conclusion that I should roll up my sleeves and tackle a shovel and pick, whether I need the money or not?"
Shirley surveyed him. "No, I don't think it does--with you."
The red which had begun to show above Brant's collar now spread toward his ears, extended his forehead, and finally suffused his entire face. He broke out hotly: "Look here, you used not to be sharp-tongued like that. If your taking up this sort of thing is going to make you not mind how you cut your friends, it 's my opinion you 'd be better at your embroidery."
Shirley bit her lip with a mischievous desire to say something which would make the angry gleam in his eyes light up still more vividly. She and Brant had played together and quarreled and made up since their nursery days, and this retort, which she would have resented from anybody else, merely delighted her from Brant.
She liked to wake him up, and considered that hurting his feelings on the score of his idleness was both salutary and justifiable. Ever since she had returned she had been feeling more and more annoyed with him for seeming to settle down so unconcernedly to a life of absolute ease and the spending of his share of the estate left him by a father who had toiled a lifetime to get his property together.
But she did not intend to be led into a serious argument with him now and here, nor did she wish to make him like her less on account of her new method of employing her time. She liked him for many good points, and she was rather wiser than most girls in perceiving when she had said enough. So after an instant's silence, she asked, with a bright glance, disarming because unexpected, "Shall we call it even?"
"Did my shot about the embroidery hit?" Brant exulted.
"Hard. It doesn't matter that I don't know how to embroider."