“Maria Edgham, you don't dare tell me you are not in love with anybody?”
“I should not answer a question of that kind to any other girl, anyway,” Maria replied, angrily.
“You are. I know it,” said Lily. “Don't be angry, dear. I am real glad.”
“I didn't say I was in love, and there is nothing for you to be glad about,” returned Maria, fairly scarlet with shame and rage. She tangled the silk with which she was working, and broke it short off. Maria was as yet not wholly controlled by herself.
“Why, you'll spoil that daisy,” Lily said, wonderingly. She herself was incapable of any such retaliation upon inanimate objects. She would have carefully untangled her silk, no matter how deeply she suffered.
“I don't care if I do!” cried Maria.
“Why, Maria!”
“Well, I don't care. I am fairly sick of so much talk and thinking about love and getting married, as if there were nothing else.”
“Maybe you are different, Maria,” admitted Lily, in a humiliated fashion.
“I don't want to hear any more about it,” Maria said, taking a fresh thread from her skein of white silk.