"I'd love to work in a hay-field—to ride on a big rake, or do you use the little ones with long handles?" asked Gay, with eager interest.
"Both; little and big horse rakes. They wouldn't let you come, would they?" said Lyman, meaning the aunts by "they."
"I suppose not."
"If you can come I'll tell you the way. Keep right on past the post office till you come to a big meadow—you'll see me there."
"I'll show up if I can."
"Some of the other fellows will be there and they will be glad to see you. I'll tell you what it is, Brown, there isn't one of us but would do anything for you, for there isn't another swell young miss in the place that would have acted as you have right along."
"Drop the swell, can't you? There's only one kind of a swell worth mentioning—the square one—and I'm not that. You wouldn't think so if you knew me."
"You can deny it," said Lyman earnestly, "but you'd feel as we do if you had lived in a country town all your life and no one looked at you except they wanted some work done at Christmas or Easter or a Sunday-school picnic, and then somebody that people thought a swell should come and take you by the hand and treat you like—anybody. That's what you did."
"I took you under the ear, first," remarked Gay.
This unfeminine, if playful, rejoinder did not disconcert Lyman. "Well, wasn't that treating me like an equal?" he asked, triumphantly.