"You'll be marrying. You ought to marry Ralph."
"Even so, you could come to see me, couldn't you? But I am not going to marry Ralph."
Miss Serena stiffened. "The whole family wants you to—" She was upon family authority, and the wooing had to be done all over again....
"I saw Thomasine in New York. She's going to live with me as my secretary. You know that she has been a typewriter and stenographer for a long time, and they say she is an excellent one. She has been studying, too, other things at night, after her long hours. She is as pretty and sweet as ever. When you come, the three of us will do wonderful things together—"
Miss Serena's bosom swelled. "I wonder when Ashendynes and Dales and Greens began to 'do things'—by which I suppose you mean going to theatres and concerts and stores and such things—together! The bottom rail's on top with a vengeance in these days! But your mother before you had no sense of blood."
Hagar sat silent, with a feeling of despair. Then she began again, her subject the flower garden, and then, at last—"Aunt Serena, tell me about the story you wanted to write...."
Ralph—Ralph was too insistent, she thought. He found her the next morning, under the old sycamore by the river, and he proceeded again to be insistent.
She stopped him impatiently. "Ralph, do you wish still to be friends, or do you wish me to put you one side of the Equator and myself on the other? I can do it."
"The Equator's an imaginary line."