"Observing my married friends."
"Oh, I am relieved! I was afraid it was through some personal experience—"
This seemed funny to them both, and they laughed together. "There's nothing of 'the maiden with reluctant feet' about me," she went on. "I simply refuse to go near the brink. I find men stupid, smelly, and coarse."
"I hate girls in the abstract—they giggle and whisper behind their hands and make mouths; but there is one girl who is different." He tried to be very significant at the moment.
She ignored his clumsy beginning of a compliment. "All the girls who giggle should marry the men who 'crack jokes'—that's my advice."
"'Pears like our serious conversation is straggling out into vituperation."
"Whose fault is it?"
"Please don't force me to say it was not my fault. I'm like Lincoln—I joke to hide my sorrows."
"Don't be irreverent."
Through all this youthful give and take the boy and girl were studying each other minutely, and the phrases that read so baldly came from their lips with so much music, so much of hidden meaning (at least with displayed suggestion), that each was tingling with the revelation of it. The words of youth are slight in content; it is the accompanying tone that carries to the heart.