‘I!’ cried Susie, with something like fright. ‘I don’t know how that could be——’
‘Nor I either,’ he said, with a smile which Susie felt to be very ingratiating. ‘You have not intended it, nor thought of it, but still you have done it. There is something that is so real in you, if I may say so—a sweet, practical truth that makes other people think.’
‘You mean,’ said Susie, with a blush, ‘that I am very matter-of-fact?’
‘No, I don’t mean that. I suppose what I mean is, that I have been going on in a kind of a dream, and you are so living that I feel the contrast. You must not ask me to explain. I’m not good at explaining. But I know what I mean. I wish you knew Overton, Miss Sandford.’
‘Yes,’ said Susie, simply, ‘I should like to know it—when do you go?’
He smiled vaguely.
‘That is what I can’t tell,’ he said. ‘I should be there now. When do you go, Miss Sandford?’
‘I don’t know that either,’ she said, with a blush of which she was greatly ashamed. ‘I suppose I ought to go now: but the country life is pleasant, far more than I could have thought, after living so long in town.’
‘You have always lived in town?’
‘As long as I can remember,’ said Susie.