“If Mr. Harry Thorpe can ask that question,” she replied, “he is not quite so impolite as I had thought him.”
“If you don't stop pouting your lips, I shall kiss them!” cried Harry—to himself.
“How is that?” he inquired breathlessly.
“Don't you know who I am?” she asked in return.
“A goddess, a beautiful woman!” he answered ridiculously enough.
She looked straight at him. This time his gaze dropped.
“I am a friend of Elizabeth Carpenter, who is Wallace Carpenter's sister, who I believe is Mr. Harry Thorpe's partner.”
She paused as though for comment. The young man opposite was occupied in many other more important directions. Some moments later the words trickled into his brain, and some moments after that he realized their meaning.
“We wrote Mr. Harry Thorpe that we were about to descend on his district with wagons and tents and Indians and things, and asked him to come and see us.”
“Ah, heart o' mine, what clear, pure eyes she has! How they look at a man to drown his soul!”