"Oh, nonsense! Let's talk of important things."
"No, but listen," he entreated, with emotion. "You won't turn me down? You're the best friend I have—we won't stop being friends?"
"You'll 'be a brother to me'?" she quoted; it was her only bitter word; and she covered it with a laugh. "'Course we are pals, always! Howard, I want to tell you what I accomplished here this summer. And oh, by the way, did you give 'Aunty Leighton' the pamphlet on the New Zealand situation?" She pulled Zip up on her lap, and teased him, kissing him between his eyes, and squeezing his little nose in her hand.
Howard said, as casually as his breath permitted, that Tommy Leighton was a fine chap—"but no mind, you know. One of those people you can't argue with on any really serious subject like suffrage. Opinions all run into molds. Can't bend 'em." Now that he had got started talking, he couldn't stop; he talked faster and faster; he told her everything he had ever heard or surmised about Mr. Leighton; "his ideas belong to the dark ages—"
"Believes in sex slavery, I suppose?" Fred interposed.
"Exactly! I—I guess I'd better be getting along," he said, with a sort of gasp. Her instant acquiescence, in springing to her feet, was at once a relief and a stab.
"Would you mind," she said, easily, "putting a basket into your tonneau and leaving it at our house? Flora and I will have such a lot of things to carry in town to-morrow."
As she spoke, she was listening with satisfaction to her own voice—calm, matter-of-fact, friendly.
He said he would be delighted to take the basket—"or anything else! Load me up, and I'll deliver the goods in Payton Street to-night!"
"Oh, no; it's too late," she said, laughing; "but if you'll take it around in the morning—"