"Then, thank you, I should like it immensely," he said, with a smile and bow, more attractive, Olive admitted to herself, than any she had received that evening.
CHAPTER VI
WEEDS AND FLOWERS
"Good morning, Miss Jane Bell! May I come in?"
Jane lifted her head quickly from over the phlox-bed she was weeding in the little garden back of the house, to see Forrest Townsend looking over the wooden gate which shut away the garden from the surrounding neighborhood.
"Good morning! Yes, indeed, come in," she responded blithely, waving a discarded white ruffled sunbonnet at her guest. He vaulted over the low barrier and came swinging down the narrow path to the end of the enclosure, where the phlox-bed lay. Here he stood still, regarding with favour the girl in the blue dress, whose bronze-tinted hair glinted in the early June sunlight.
"Always busy at something, are n't you?" he said, tipping over a bushel-basket half-filled with weeds, and seating himself upon it. "Yes, I know I 've spilled out the weeds, but I 'll pick 'em up again when I 'm through. I came over to have a serious talk with you, and I 've got to be down here near you, where I can look you in the eye. The grass is too damp yet to sit on in white trousers."
Jane laughed. "It can't be a very serious matter that's troubling you, or you would n't think of your clothes."
"It is serious, though. I 'm full of it, and can't stop to talk about the weather, so here goes.--I 've quarrelled with my father."
Jane, who had thus far not ceased her weeding, stopped work and sat still to look at her neighbour. He met her gaze defiantly.