Then his West Point training against all forms of deceit led him to wondering, at once, whether Mr. Cameron could truthfully be defined as "a ridiculous thing."
"Tell me," smiled the girl patiently.
"Not I," defied Prescott gayly. "Then you would find me more ridiculous than the thing about which I was thinking."
"Oh!" she replied, and the cadet fancied that his companion spoke in a tone of more or less hurt.
But, at least, Dick could look straight into her face now, as they talked, and every instant he realized more and more keenly how lovely Miss Bentley was growing to be.
They were driving down sweet-scented country lanes now. The whole scene fitted romance. The cadet remembered Flirtation Walk, at West Point, and it struck him that there was danger, at the present moment, of Flirtation Drive.
"I wonder what the dear girl is thinking about at this present moment?" pondered Dick.
"I wonder what it was that made him so abstracted, and then so suddenly merry?" was the thought in Miss Bentley's mind.
"That was a very pretty road we came through before we turned into this one," commented Dick at a hazard.
"I didn't notice it," replied Laura. "Where are we now? Oh, yes! I know the locality now."