She had shaken hands with him; he held her hand a moment. “Have you any special reason for not going?”
“Yes, Mr. Brand,” said the young girl.
“May I ask what it is?”
She looked at him smiling; and in her smile, as I have intimated, there was a certain dullness. But mingled with this dullness was something sweet and suggestive. “Because the sky is so blue!” she said.
He looked at the sky, which was magnificent, and then said, smiling too, “I have heard of young ladies staying at home for bad weather, but never for good. Your sister, whom I met at the gate, tells me you are depressed,” he added.
“Depressed? I am never depressed.”
“Oh, surely, sometimes,” replied Mr. Brand, as if he thought this a regrettable account of one’s self.
“I am never depressed,” Gertrude repeated. “But I am sometimes wicked. When I am wicked I am in high spirits. I was wicked just now to my sister.”
“What did you do to her?”
“I said things that puzzled her—on purpose.”