A little nettled, Jan said, “I thought this, Rose: from your treatment of Kate the other day at the fair, that you were her enemy rather than her friend.”
“That is because you are an old buffle-head. Of course we are bosom friends, but I’m full of fun, and we tease one another’we girls’just as kids gambol. You are so heavy and solemn and dull, you don’t understand our gambols. You are like a great ox looking on at kids and lambs, and wondering what it all means when they frisk, and you take it for solemn earnest.”
“But about the quarrel at the stall’the kerchief?”
“That was play.”
“And the workbox that Noah knocked from under her arm? Was that play?”
“Purely. Jan, I had a much better workbox which I wanted to give Kate, and you went and spoiled my purpose by giving her that trumpery affair. I am not ashamed to own it. I told Noah to strike it from under her arm, that I might give her the box I had put aside for her.”
“And she has it?”
“Yes; oh dear, yes!’of course she has it.”
Jan shook his head; he was puzzled, but supposed all was right’supposed, because he was too straightforward and good-hearted to mistrust the girl who spoke so frankly, with great eyes looking him full in the face, and smiling. Impudence is more convincing than innocence.
Then Rose said, “How good you are, Jan’how tremendously good! Really, it is a privilege to live in the same parish, and drive in the same buggy beside so excellent a Christian.”