"I should hope not," he gasped.
"So come now, tell me everything. Does she pet you and call you funny names and ruffle your hair the way I do?"
Bernie assumed an attitude of military erectness. "It's bad enough for me to be a reprobate in secret," he said, stiffly, "but I sha'n't allow my own flesh and blood to share my shame and gloat over it."
The girl's essential innocence, her child-like capacity for seeing only the romance of a situation in which he himself recognized real dishonor, made him feel ashamed, yet he was grateful that she took the matter, after all, so lightly. His respite, however, was of short duration. Failing to draw him out on the subject which held her interest for the moment, Myra Nell followed the beckoning of a new thought. Fixing her eyes meditatively upon him, she said, with mellow satisfaction:
"It seems we're both being gossiped about, dear."
"You? What have you been doing?" he demanded, in despair.
"Oh, I really haven't done anything, but it's nearly as bad. There's a report that Norvin Blake is paying all my Carnival bills, and naturally it has occasioned talk. Of course I denied it; the idea is too preposterous."
Bernie, who had in a measure recovered his composure, felt himself paling once more.
"Amy Cline told me she'd heard that he actually bought my dresses, but Amy is a catty creature. She's mad over Lecompte, you know; that's why I encourage him; and she wanted to be Queen, too, but la, la, she's so skinny! Well, I was furious, naturally—" Miss Warren paused, quick to note the telltale signs in her brother's face. "Bernie!" she said. "Look me in the eye!" Then—"It is true!"
Her own eyes were round and horrified, her rosy cheeks lost something of their healthy glow; for once in her capricious life she was not acting.