“Well, then,” he asserted stoutly, “I’m spoiling for a ride with you.”
“There’s Lute, and Ernestine, and Bert, and all the rest.”
“This is new country,” he contended. “And one learns country through the people who know it. I’ve seen it through the eyes of Lute, and Ernestine and all the rest; but there is a lot I haven’t seen and which I can see only through your eyes.”
“A pleasant theory,” she evaded. “A—a sort of landscape vampirism.”
“But without the ill effects of vampirism,” he urged quickly.
Her answer was slow in coming. Her look into his eyes was frank and straight, and he could guess her words were weighed and gauged.
“I don’t know about that,” was all she said finally; but his fancy leaped at the several words, ranging and conjecturing their possible connotations.
“But we have so much we might be saying to each other,” he tried again. “So much we... ought to be saying to each other.”
“So I apprehend,” she answered quietly; and again that frank, straight look accompanied her speech.
So she did apprehend—the thought of it was flame to him, but his tongue was not quick enough to serve him to escape the cool, provoking laugh as she turned into the house.