"Miss him? He was never here till a month ago—"
"Nor was I," Sarella interrupted pouting prettily. "But you'd miss me, now."
"Only you're not going away."
"You take it for granted I shall stop, then?" (And Sarella looked complacent.) "That I'm a fixture."
"I never thought of your going away," Mariquita answered, with a formula rather habitual to her. "Where would you go?"
"I should decide on that when I decided to go." Sarella declared oracularly. But Mariquita took it with irritating calmness.
"I don't believe you will decide to go," she said with that gravity and plainness of hers that often irritated Sarella—who liked badinage. "It would be useless."
"Suppose," Sarella suggested, pinching the younger girl's arm playfully, "suppose I were to think of getting married. Shouldn't I have to go then?"
"I never thought of that—" Mariquita was beginning, but Sarella pinched and interrupted her.
"Do you ever think of anything?" she complained sharply.