"She was better-looking than you are, or ever will be!" snarled Mr. Loftus. "Are you goin' to sit here all day talkin' about women's folderols? I have to pay for 'em, and I guess that's all I want to know about 'em."
Glad enough was Hildegarde when four o'clock came, and she could plead an appointment to meet her mother at a certain turn of the road, as they were going for a walk together.
"More walking!" cried Mrs. Loftus. "You'll have a fever, I'm certain of it. I don't think girls ought ever to walk, unless it's a little turn in the park while the horses are waiting, or something of that sort." She begged Hildegarde to wait till the horses were harnessed, but our heroine was firm, and finally departed, leaving her good-natured hostess shaking her head in the doorway, like a mandarin in wine-coloured satin.
As she turned the corner by the gilded iron gates, Hildegarde was startled by the apparition of a small boy in brown corduroy, sitting on a post and swinging his legs.
Hildegarde was fond of boys. One of her two best friends was a boy, and she had a little sweetheart in Maine, whose name was Benny, and who loved her with all the ardour of four years old. This boy must be six or seven, she thought. He had red hair, a round, rosy, freckled face, and two eyes so blue and so bright that the very meeting them made her smile. Her smile was answered by a flash, which lighted up the whole face, and subsided instantly, leaving preternatural gravity.
"How do you do?" said Hildegarde. "Is it fun sitting there?"
"No!" said the boy; and down he came. Then shyness seized him; he hung his head and considered his toes attentively.
"My name is Hilda," continued our heroine. "Do you think it is a nice name?"
He nodded, still intent on the boots.
"But I don't know what your name is," she went on sadly. "I should like to tell you about my puppy, if you would walk along by me, but you see I can't, because I don't know your name."