He had forced an issue at last, but Judith evaded it, laughing softly in the dark.
"Oh, are we?"
"Aren't we?"
"How do you know there isn't anybody else?"
"Well, you won't look at Ed, and Murph don't count." Willard made this pronouncement lightly, though the adamantine rules and impassable barriers of a whole social order were embodied in it. "Murph that you're so thick with, all of a sudden. He's a bully fellow, all right, next captain of the team, probably. Good thing he's broken into the crowd a little way. Too bad he's Irish. Murph don't count."
"No—no!" A sudden and poignant sweetness thrilled in Judith's voice. The tenor of the Green River High School quartette, not ordinarily sensitive to variations of tone in the voices of others, could not ignore it. The change had disturbed him vaguely. It seemed to call for some comment.
"Judy, you look great to-night.... I'd do anything for you."
"Then go home, Willard."
"You haven't answered my question."
"What question?"