"I'm glad you didn't forget it entirely. Oh, and I must tell you something. Brother says that Mr. Goyle is smitten with you."
Agnes, still rippling, turned half way round, sniffed and turned back. "I hate him so hard that it's almost second cousin to love," she declared.
"Don't let it be any closer kin, Agnes. There is always danger in a first cousin."
Agnes, still rippling, sniffed contemptuously. "He's been following me around all the morning. How I love to hate him."
The voice of Mrs. Elbridge was heard, calling Florence, who answered that she was coming, but she halted long enough to say to Agnes, mischievously, that she might learn to love him if she loved to hate him. Both love and hate were kindred passions, with but a thin partition between them. As she was going out, Agnes shouted after her that, if she ever loved him she would hate herself, and then, just as Goyle and Bodney entered the room, she added: "We tar and feather such fellows in Quincy."
"You do what in Quincy?" Bodney asked.
And Agnes, without looking round, repeated: "Tar and feather such fellows."
Goyle knew that she meant him, but instead of kindling resentment, her words aroused in him an additional interest in her. He looked at her as in the rhythmic sway of her graceful form, the nodding of her shapely head, she kept time with a tune, half remembered, half improvised; and, turning to Bodney, he asked in tones too low for the girl to hear: "Has she got any money?"
"I think she has."
"Leave me alone with her."