"Ruth! Why, good morning!"
"Have you answered that letter from Oklahoma?"
"No, I haven't, Ruth. But never mind that letter. We won't talk about it any more."
"I just wanted to ask you not to answer it till we'd talked it over again, Nelson."
He hesitated a moment. "I don't see the use of that. I wanted to see how you really felt about it, and now I've found out."
"Well, don't answer it right away. That's all. Are you coming up to-night, Nelson?"
"Sure."
Ruth smiled faintly at the emphatic syllable. "Good-by," she said, then sighed as she hung up the receiver. "Well, it's all right," she told the waiting Peggy. "I haven't done any mischief that I can't undo."
But when Nelson came that evening he proved unexpectedly obdurate. He showed an extreme reluctance to re-open the subject of the Oklahoma proposition, and roused Ruth's indignation by hinting that the matter did not concern Peggy Raymond, and he could not see any reason for her "butting in." And when sternly called to order for this bit of heresy, he still showed himself unwilling to talk of Oklahoma.
"What's the use?" he burst out suddenly. "I know how you feel about it. I—I—It's awfully hard explaining, Ruth, when I haven't any right to—to say how I feel—but the long and short of it is I wouldn't go to any place where you wouldn't live."