He had muttered an inaudible something. A thought came to her.
“Why, Bob,” she cried, “you’re not cross because you weren’t invited to take part, are you? You don’t sing. You refused to sing even in the chorus at the Old Folks’ Concert. And we—I mean the committee—seemed to think it wasn’t necessary to have any one select the costumes this time; the books tells us just what to wear. You mustn’t feel slighted. I never supposed for a minute that you would.”
He shook his head impatiently. “Of course I don’t feel slighted,” he declared. “That doesn’t amount to anything.”
“Then what is it? Why are you so grumpy? I never saw you act so before.”
He frowned. “Esther,” he blurted, after a moment of indecision, “I don’t like this business at all. I don’t like it.”
“What business?”
“Having this fellow here in the house with you, going everywhere with you and—and, well, I don’t like it.”
She gazed at him in incredulous astonishment. Then she laughed merrily.
“Bob!” she exclaimed. “Why, Bob Griffin! You are not jealous, are you? You are not silly enough to be that.”
He was precisely that, but of course—perhaps for that very reason—he hotly denied the accusation.