"A pretty poor sort of one," flashed the girl. She started to go back into the road, intending to go on to the postoffice, when the boy called imploringly:
"Don't go yet. I like you even if you do catch butterflies and worms. Come over and see me; won't you?
"I don't visit boys," loftily. "Besides, I don't know where you live."
"We live in the big white house just beyond you," he told her in an injured tone. "You people are so inhospitable. I thought Missouri folks were nice to strangers. My mother feels bad about it. We have been here a whole month, and you haven't even noticed that we lived next to you."
"We have not been home very long ourselves," explained Bee, touched by the allusion to Missouri. "You see, my father has been away from me for a long, long time, and we have been so busy getting acquainted with each other that we have not paid much attention to other people. Perhaps we will come over to see you. I'll ask him. I must go on now; so, good-bye."
"I'll just go along with you," said the boy, swinging into step by her side. "You see my pony lost a shoe, and I had to wait for him to be shod, so I walked out here a ways when I saw you coming. I'll just take you back in my cart. It is a long, hot walk."
"Will you?" asked Bee gratefully. It was a long distance, and after the chase the butterfly had given her she was glad of the offer. "It is very kind of you."
"Oh, that's all right," he said in an offhand manner. "I like to be obliging to my friends; and we are going to be friends, you know."
"Are we?" asked Bee, laughing outright. "Why, how do you know that you will care to be after you know me?"
"We've got to be," he replied. "We live next to each other, and it would be so convenient. I made up my mind that we'd be friends when I first saw you."