“Sweetheart is so—much sweeter. I like to call you that,” said the young man, giving her a tender look.
“No matter, I won’t have it! Mind that, please,” the girl answered, saucily tossing her long golden curls and pouting her ripe red lips in a sort of disdain.
“What made you promise Frank? Didn’t you know perfectly well that I was going to ask you?”
“Maybe I did, and maybe that’s the reason I asked Frank to ask me first. Ha! ha!”
No words could describe the exquisite unconscious coquetry of the girl’s looks and manner—coquetry blended with airy contempt of the tenderness that shone in the man’s blue eyes—maidenhood is so cruel.
Tom Hinton’s face flushed deeply, and he chewed the ends of his small, fair mustache uneasily.
“Do you mean that you prefer my brother to me?” he asked, angrily; and Thea laughed again, and answered, with inexcusable slang for a boarding-school miss:
“That’s about the size of it, Mr. Hinton.”
The young man regarded her wrathfully a moment, then answered with an irrepressible sneer:
“Maybe you don’t know that Frank’s got a sweetheart already when you’re throwing yourself at his head so boldly?”