“You don’t like me,” he began after they had walked a few steps farther. “You don’t like me.”
This was actually better. It choked back the sobs rising in her throat. The stupid shock of it, his tasteless foolishness, helped her by its very folly to a sort of defense against the disastrous wave of emotion she might not have been able to control. She gathered herself together.
“It must be an unusual experience,” she answered.
“Well it is—sort of,” he said, but in a manner curiously free from fatuous swagger. “I’ve had luck that way. I guess it’s been because I’d got to make friends so as I could earn a living. It seems sort of queer to know that some one got a grouch against me that—that I can’t get away with.”
She looked up the avenue to see how much farther they must walk together, since she was not “a sprinter” and could not get away from him. She thought she caught a glimpse through the trees of a dog-cart driven by a groom, and hoped she was not mistaken and that it was driving in their direction.
“It must, indeed,” she said, “though I am not sure I quite understand what a grouch is.”
“When you’ve got a grouch against a fellow,” he explained impersonally, “you want to get at him. You want to make him feel like a mutt; and a mutt’s the worst kind of a fool. You’ve got one against me.
“I knew there was a lot against me when I came here,” he persisted. “I should have been a fool if I hadn’t. I knew when you came that I was up against a pretty hard proposition; but I thought perhaps if I got busy and showed you—you’ve got to show a person—”
“Showed me what?” she asked contemptuously.
“Showed you—well—me,” he tried to explain.