“I don’t think that I love anybody, Renny.”
“Oh, Paulie! then there must be something dreadfully bad the matter with you.”
Pauline buried her face in Verena’s soft white neck and lay quiet.
“Does your head ache very badly, Paulie?”
“Pretty badly; but it is not too bad for us to talk—that is, if you will keep off the unpleasant subjects.”
“But what unpleasant subjects can there be? I don’t understand you, Paulie. I cannot think of anything specially unpleasant to talk of now.”
“You are a bit of a goose, you know,” replied Pauline with a smile.
“Am I? I didn’t know it. But what are the subjects we are not to talk about?”
“Oh, you must know! Aunt Sophia, for instance, and that awful time at Easterhaze, and the most terrible of all terrible days when I went to the White Bay, and Nancy King, and—and my birthday. I can’t talk of these subjects. I will talk of anything else—of baby Marjorie, and how pretty she grows; how fond we are of nurse, and of father, and—oh!”
Pauline burst into a little laugh.