But Peggy merely stared at him incredulously.
“It must have been a joke!” she exclaimed.
Howard Brent shook his head.
“Well, even if it were a joke, it strikes me as being of a not very well-bred kind. I didn’t know how you might feel concerning it, but I felt that you ought to know. If you wish to continue friends with Marshall, now that you know, why of course it is not my affair. Perhaps girls are all alike!” Howard concluded.
Peggy was still looking at him, surprised, but not overwhelmed and apparently not entirely convinced.
“Somehow making a bet of that kind sounds so stupid,” she argued—not so much with her companion as with the impressions struggling for first place in her own mind. “It isn’t that I doubt what you have told me, Mr. Brent, only that I think you have made a mistake. Why should Ralph care enough one way or the other whether I like him? I am not a very important person.”
Howard Brent got up. “If you would like confirmation of my story you can speak to Terry Benton,” he announced, looking decidedly angry. “Personally, I am sorry I spoke to you of it.”
But Peggy had also gotten up and now put her hand on her companion’s arm.
“No; you are not sorry,” she returned. “Of course, I don’t want to speak of what you have told me to Terry Benton. But I would like to ask Ralph. Will you tell him to come over to see me in the morning, if he is well enough.”
And Peggy walked back with Howard Brent to say good night to her mother and aunt, serenely talking of other things.