Tibby opened her eyes to their widest extent.
“You alarm me, Mr. Bartram,� she said. “How am I different? I’ll wager two bits that I know. It’s these freckles on the side of my nose.� She turned her head toward him with a bewitching air of candor. “I don’t mind them, indeed I don’t. Besides, they are not there all the time, only since I came here and rode about in the sun and wind so much.�
“I am afraid you are incorrigible. You know very well that’s not what I mean.�
“O, isn’t it?� ruefully. “Perhaps you wouldn’t mind telling me how I am at fault. I don’t want to be told. I—am very sensitive, as sensitive as a—a nettle, so please do let me down easy, that’s a good fellow,� she said in a wheedling tone.
“You are not sensitive. You don’t care what any one says or thinks of you.�
“Don’t I? Then I must be desperately wicked. My mother used to say that Don’t Care represented total depravity.�
“It is evident you do not care what I think of you,� Donald said, looking straight before him.
“Mr. Bartram, your discernment is wonderful; or is it intuition? Whichever it is, you arrive at correct conclusions. What did you kill when you went hunting last week? Lovely little birds, whose song has been wantonly stilled forever?�
“Indeed, no. I am not so wicked as to kill song birds, not even though heartless women delight to decorate their hats with their dead bodies.�
“Ugh, I do not,� said Tibby, with a shudder. “I don’t even like women who are thoughtless enough to wear them. They are as bad as the Indians who love to dangle scalp-locks from their belts.�