"May I expect you?" asked the minister, reading his thoughts almost as plainly as though they had been printed on his face, and judging that this was the time to press an acceptance.
"Why, yes," said Norm, "I suppose so."
One of these days Norman Decker will not think of accepting an invitation with such words, but his intentions are good, now, and the minister thanks him as though he had received a favor, and departs well pleased.
And now it is really growing late and little Sate must be carried home. It was an evening to remember.
They talked it over by inches the next morning. Nettie finishing the breakfast dishes, and Jerry sitting on the doorstep fashioning a bracket for the kitchen lamp.
Nettie talked much about Ermina Farley. "She is just as lovely and sweet as she can be. It was beautiful in her to come over to me as she did when she came into that yard; part of it was for little Trudie's sake, and a great deal of it was for my sake. I saw that at the time; and I saw it plainer all the afternoon. She didn't give me a chance to feel alone once; and she didn't stay near me as though she felt she ought to, but didn't want to, either; she just took hold and helped do everything Miss Sherrill gave me to do, and was as bright and sweet as she could be. I shall never forget it of her. But for all that," she added as she wrung out her dishcloth with an energy which the small white rag hardly needed, "I know it was pretty hard for her to do it, and I shall not give her a chance to do it again."
"I want to know what there was hard about it?" said Jerry, looking up in astonishment. "I thought Ermina Farley seemed to be having as good a time as anybody there."
"Oh, well now, I know, you are not a girl; boys are different from girls. They are not so kind-of-mean! At least, some of them are not," she added quickly, having at that moment a vivid recollection of some mean things which she had endured from boys. "Really I don't think they are," she said, after a moment's thoughtful pause, and replying to the quizzical look on his face. "They don't think about dresses, and hats, and gloves, and all those sorts of things as girls do, and they don't say such hateful things. Oh! I know there is a great difference; and I know just how Ermina Farley will be talked about because she went with me, and stood up for me so; and I think it will be very hard for her. I used to think so about you, but you—are real different from girls!"
"It amounts to about this," said Jerry, whittling gravely. "Good boys are different from bad girls, and bad boys are different from good girls."
Nettie laughed merrily. "No," she said, "I do know what I am talking about, though you don't think so; I know real splendid girls who couldn't have done as Ermina Farley did yesterday, and as you do all the time; and what I say is, I don't mean to put myself where she will have to do it, much. I don't want to go to their parties; I don't expect a chance to go, but if I had it, I wouldn't go; and just for her sake, I don't mean to be always around for her to have to take care of me as she did yesterday. I have something else to do." Said Jerry, "Where do you think Norm is to take me this evening?"