“I’m Jennie Brent, yes.”
“Sure,” said Billy. “Now I get why you’re so—so—dog-goned—well, full out!”
She colored very pleasantly.
“Oh,” she smiled—and in her smile there was a combination of pleasure and wistfulness hard to picture and harder to interpret—“you think that?” She turned wholly serious and wholly wistful. “Why?”
“Gosh!” he temporized, “I—I don’t know. But anyway, Colonel Brent’s daughter⸺”
She flushed with pleasure and interrupted:
“You know daddy, then?”
“You bet!”
“Then you’ve got to come in for tea this afternoon. We’ll be all settled by then. I’ll tell daddy you’re coming. Oh, and I almost forgot—how shall I describe you to him?”
“But—but I was going to take a flying kiwi up for his pay hops.”