"See here," said Patsy, "this is no stock-in-trade to start out on. You sulk at the first mention of a man's name. I shall see hundreds in London. You will see as many women. I am only a little country girl staying with a great Princess, while you will be the heir to an earldom, besides having all the prestige of the uniform. Oh, I shall like that part of it myself, I don't deny. But I am not going to have you sulking because I speak to this man or dance with that man, or even tell you that I like one man better than another."
She paused, but Louis did not speak. So Patsy, after a long look at him, continued. "I don't know yet whether I love you as you mean, Louis Raincy—or whether I shall ever love any man. Certainly I am not going to cry about you or about anybody. I like you—yes—I like you better than any one I know except Uncle Julian, but not a bit like the lovers in books. So I suppose I am not in love. I would not have you climbing balconies or singing ditties in boats for half this country. I should want to be in bed and asleep. Some day, maybe, I shall love a man, and then I shall love him for take and have and keep. But it has just got to happen, Louis—and if it comes for somebody else, why, I rather think it will be so much the better for you. Come now, it is time to go home. Shake hands, and be friends—no, sir, nothing else. Wait a good quarter of an hour after I am gone. We don't know what is before either of us, but if you are going to whimper about what we can't help—I am not!"
She jumped on the first branches of the larch, still holding Louis's hand. As she let go she took a handful of his clustering curls and gave a cheerful tug to his head that brought the tears sharply to his eyes.
"Go off and try to fall in love with a dozen of the prettiest girls you can find in London, and if you don't succeed in three years, come back here and we will talk the matter all over again from the beginning."
She was now on the top of the wall. She turned her legs over deftly to the other side with a swirl of her skirts.
"Good-bye, Louis!" she said, waving a brown hand at him as she slid off into the wood. "Some day you will be more of a man than I, and then you will not let a girl put you down."
"Do you know what I think?" cried the boy, exasperated. "I think that you are a hard-hearted little wretch!"
But only the sound of Patsy's laughter rippled up mockingly from far down the glade.