'If our tastes are so; but surely we know our own minds, little one, quite as much as you and Jack Elliot of ours do.'
'There now—you are angry with me!' said Maude, with a pout on her lip.
'Angry—not at all, Maude; who could be angry with you? But I am disappointed a little.'
'And so am I—not a little, but very much.'
'How?'
'I always thought you were attached to our sweet and earnest-eyed Hester.'
'And so I am,' replied Roland, selecting a cigar with great apparent care; 'but, as a cousin, you know.'
'And now it seems to be Annot!' said Maude, with her white hands folded on her knee and looking up at him with an air of annoyance.
'Beyond my admissions just made, what led you to think so?'
'A thousand things! I am not blind, nor is anyone else. According to what you have said, then you must be engaged!'