"If," said she, impersonally, "if you believe it was because of you, you are very much mistaken. It would have been the same with anybody. You don't understand, and I don't either. Anyhow, I think you are a mess, and I hate you. Go away from me!"
And she stamped her foot in a fine rage.
For the moment I entertained an un-Christian desire that Stella had been born a boy. In that case, I felt, I would, just then, have really enjoyed sitting upon the back of her head, and grinding her nose into the lawn, and otherwise persuading her to cry "'Nough." These virile pleasures being denied me, I sought for comfort in discourteous speech.
"Umph-huh!" said I, "and you think you're mighty smart, don't you? Well, I don't want you pawing around me any more, either. I won't have it, do you understand! That was what I was going to tell you anyhow, you kissing-bug, even if you hadn't acted so smart. And you can just stick that right in your pipe and smoke it, you old Miss Smart Alec."
Thereupon I—wisely—departed without delay. A rock struck me rather forcibly between the shoulder blades, but I did not deign to notice this phenomenon.
"You can't fight girls with fists," I reflected. "You've just got to talk to them in the right way."
2.
He Loves Extensively
I saw no more of Stella for a lengthy while, since within two days of the events recorded it pleased my mother to seek out another summer resort.
"For in September," she said, "I really must have perfect quiet and unimpeachable butter, and falling leaves, and only a very few congenial people to be melancholy with,—and that sort of thing, you know. I find it freshens one up so against the winter."