“Told you before! Ye Gods and little fishes! I’ve been telling you for pretty near eighteen years.”
“Well, I never heard you!”
“Why don’t you say you don’t give a hang for me and let me go?”
“But, Lewis, I give a whole lot of hangs for you and I don’t want you to go.”
“Oh, I know the kind of hangs you give: just this brother and sister business,” and the young man dropped the girl’s hands.
Douglas felt like crying, but Lewis was so absurd she had to laugh. What time had she to think about getting engaged? She felt as though the whole world rested on her young shoulders. Here was her mother wanting her to make a debut, and Helen wanting to spend on a silly trip the pitiful little money they had begun to save from their boarding camp. And now Lewis Somerville and Bill Tinsley, the brawn and sinew of their undertaking, suddenly deciding that they must enlist and hike out for the Mexican border!
“We must go back to the pavilion,” she said wearily. Her voice sounded very tired and she stumbled a little as she turned to go down the path.
“Now, Douglas, I have distressed you,” and Lewis was all thoughtfulness and consideration. “I didn’t mean to, honey—I just want you to say you love me the way I love you.”
“And I can’t say it, because I never thought of your caring for me in any different way. You are the best friend I have in the world.”
“Well, that is something and I am going to keep on being it. Maybe when I come back from Mexico you will think differently. You will write to me, won’t you?”