"Didn't you have any dog?" she demanded.
"I hope not, in a four-room flat," the lady returned with feeling. "One family kept one, though, and the nasty little thing jumped up on a lovely checked silk aunty had just given me, and ruined it. I tried to take it out with gasolene, but it made a dreadful spot, and I cried myself sick. Of course I didn't understand about rubbing the gasolene dry then; I was only eleven."
The children looked uncomfortably at the ground, conscious of a distinct lack of sympathy for the tragedy that even at this distance deepened the lovely rose of the lady's cheek and softened her dark blue eyes.
"But in the summer," the young man said, "surely it was different then! In the country—"
"Oh, mercy, we didn't get to the country very much," she interrupted. "You know July and August are bargain times in the stores and a dressmaker can't afford to leave. Aunty did all her buying then and I went with her. Dear me," as something in his face struck her, "you needn't look so horrified! It's not bad in New York a bit—there's something going on all the while; and then we went to Rockaway and Coney Island evenings, and had grand times. To tell you the truth, I never cared for the country—I don't sleep a bit well there. Of course, to come out this way, with everything nice, it's all very fine, but to stay in—no, thanks."
"I know what you mean, of course," he said, "but the city's no place for children. I'm mighty glad I didn't grow up there. And I've always had the idea the country would be the best place to settle down in, finally. You can potter around better there when you're old, don't you think so? I remember old Uncle Robert and his chrysanthemums—"
"Dear me, we all seem to be remembering a good deal this afternoon!" she broke in. "Since we're neither of us children and neither of us ready to settle down on account of old age, suppose we stick to town, Bob?"
There was a practical brightness in her voice, and her even white teeth, as she smiled persuasively at him, were very pretty. He smiled back at her.
"That seems a fair proposition," he agreed. He reached for her hand and for a moment her soft, bright coloring, her dainty completeness, framed in the green of the little glade, were all he saw. Then, as his eyes lingered on the cool little pond and the waving pine boughs dark against the blue sky, he sighed.
"But I'm sorry you don't like the country, Tina, I am, truly," he said boyishly. "I've had such bully times in it. And I—I rather had the idea that we liked the same things."