They looked at each other confidentially.
“We have, lately,” Vibbard admitted.
“Then perhaps you can tell me who that girl is that I just passed.”
“Oh, yes,” said Silverthorn, at once. “That’s Ida Winwood, the daughter of the superintendent here at the mills.”
“She is a very striking girl,” I said. “You know her, of course?”
“A little.”
Vibbard enlarged upon this: it was a curious habit they had fallen into, of each waiting for the other to explain what should more properly have been explained by himself.
“Thorny’s father, you know,” said Vibbard, “was a great machinist, and so they had acquaintances around at mills in different parts of the State. She—that is Ida, you know—is only sixteen now, but Thorny first saw her when he was a boy and came here, once or twice, with his father.”
Silverthorn nodded his head corroboratively.
“But it seems to me,” I said, addressing him, “that you treat her rather distantly for an old acquaintance; or else she treats you distantly. Which is it?”