Before they were half up the hill, they were on good terms again. “I don't want to go home, do you?” he asked.
“Home? I have no home—I'm only a poor working girl.”
“Oh, what would this be with music! I can see it now! Ladies and gentlemen, with your kind permission, I will endeavour to give you a little song of my own composition, entitled: 'Why Has the Working Girl No Home!'”
“You haven't my permission, and you're a wretch.”
“I am,” he admitted, cheerfully, “moreover, I'm a worm in the dust.”
“I don't like worms.”
“Then you'll have to learn.”
Ruth resented his calm assumption of mastery. “You're dreadfully young,” she said; “do you think you'll ever grow up?”
“Huh!” returned Winfield, boyishly, “I'm most thirty.”
“Really? I shouldn't have thought you were of age.”