'I have never been able to understand,' Rob answered, 'how I lost that card. But,' he added sharply, 'how do you know that I lost it?'
Mary glanced up again.
'I hate being asked questions, Mr. Angus,' she said sweetly.
'Do you remember,' Rob went on, 'saying in that book that men were not to be trusted until they reached their second childhood?'
'I don't know,' Mary replied, laughing, 'that they are to be trusted even then.'
'I should think,' said Rob, rather anxiously, 'that a woman might as well marry a man in his first childhood as in his second. Surely the golden mean——' Rob paused. He was just twenty-seven.
'We should strike the golden mean, you think?' asked Mary demurely. 'But you see it is of such short duration.'
After that there was such a long pause that Mary could easily have gone down the ladder had she wanted to do so.
'I am glad that you and Dick are such friends,' she said at last.
'Why?' asked Rob quickly.