"What a nice-looking boy you are!" she said, frankly condescending. "What is your name?"
"What a nice-looking boy you are!" she said.
"Robert Gault, your very humble servant!" he replied, bowing again, and smiling. The smile was altogether to Barbara's fancy, and showed even, strong, white teeth, another most uncommon merit in a boy. "And I am sure," he went on, "that this is Mistress Barbara Ladd whom I have the honour to address."
"Why, how do you know me?" exclaimed Barbara, highly pleased. Then, quickly apprehensive, she added, "What makes you think I am Barbara Ladd?"
The boy noted the change in her countenance, and wondered at it. But he replied at once:
"Of course the name of Mistress Barbara Ladd, and her daring, and her canoe-craft, and her beauty" (this he added out of his own instant conviction), "have spread far down the river. When I came up here the other day to visit my grandmother" (he indicated slightly the distant roofs of Gault House), "I came with a great hope of being permitted to meet you!"
Evidently he knew nothing of her flight. Her uneasiness vanished. But she had never had a compliment before—a personal compliment, such as is dear to every wise feminine heart—and that word "beauty" was most melodious to her ears. As a matter of fact, she did not herself admire her own appearance at all, and even had an aversion to the mirror—but it occurred to her now, for the first time, that this was a point upon which it was not needful that every one should agree with her. It was practically her first real lesson in tolerance toward an opinion that differed from her own.
"I'll warrant you heard no good of that same Barbara Ladd, more's the pity!" she answered, coquettishly tossing her dark little head and shooting at him a distracting sidelong glance from narrowed lids. "Anyhow, if you are Lady Gault's grandson, I am most happy to meet you."