He pulled up a chair in front of her and sat down, looking—or trying to look—straight into her eyes.
"See here, Miss Gray," said he with sudden earnestness, "if that's the only thing you think I can do you're certainly rating me pretty low."
"I'm not rating you at all. I don't know enough about you."
"That's a harder blow than the other one." He tried to speak lightly, but chagrin was in his face. "If you'd just added 'and don't want to know' you'd have finished your work of making me feel about three feet high."
"Would you prefer to be made to feel eight feet? Plenty of people will do that for you. You see I so often find a yardstick measures my own height, I know the humiliating sensation it is. And I'm never more convinced of my own smallness than when I see my uncles and their families at Christmas, especially Uncle Rufus. Do you know which one he is?"
"You were dancing with him when I came in."
"I didn't see you come in."
"I might have known that," he admitted with a rueful laugh. "Well, did you dance an old-fashioned square dance with him, and is he a delightful looking, elderly gentleman with a face like a jolly boy?"
"Exactly that—and he's a boy in heart, too, but a man in mind. I wonder if—"
"He'd care to meet me? I'm sure you weren't going to ask if I'd care to meet him. But I'd consider it an honour if he'd let me be presented to him."