“Don’t you like it, dear?” he asked. I didn’t mind that “Dear” at all. In fact I liked it. I had come to think of Sam as the best friend I’d ever had.
“I love it,” I answered, “but it must have cost a great deal—”
He laughed down at me. “Look here, young woman,” he said, in his drawling slow way, “Some day I’m going to ask you to take over the management of my finances, but until I do, I want the privilege of buying you a little thing like that once and again—”
What he said about finances worried me terribly, because I can’t add at all, and my cash account gives me real pain, and I have almost nothing to account for or to enter. But even at that, each month there is too much or too little, which makes me have to add a cream puff, or take one out.
“Sam,” I said, “I’d do anything for you, because I like you so much, but I can’t add. Why don’t you get Mr. Wake to help you! He’s there anyway, you see, and in a year I’ll be over in America—”
He slipped his arm through mine, and squeezed it against his side.
“Mr. Wake is right about you,” he said, as he smiled down at me, in a sort of a funny way.
“Why?” I asked.
“Well, he thinks you a dear little girl. . . . And you are—just that.”
“Don’t you like it?” I questioned, because it didn’t seem exactly as if he did.