"Don't, don't think of that," Tilly urged, her pretty lips twitching with almost maternal sympathy. "If you were to offer to pay it would offend Sally."
"Offend her? Why, in the name of common sense?"
"I don't know, but it would hurt me—it would hurt anybody. It is of no consequence."
"But you talked differently before it happened," John insisted, his lip hanging and quivering. "You said distinctly that the things were borrowed and that Miss Sally wanted—"
"Yes, but it is done now and the only thing is to forget it. Don't even mention it to Sally."
"Not mention it to her? Why not?" John's tongue was thick with the mystery in which he was warmly floundering.
"Because that would not be right—not according to—to custom."
"Custom be—" John bit off the oath with exasperated teeth. "I don't care a hill of beans what the custom is here in these backwoods. I want to pay my way in this life. I laid a cigar down one day against a fellow's hat, and burned a big hole in it. I bought him another and it tickled him to death. It was the best hat in town, while his was an old one, and—"
"But this is different," Tilly pleaded. "Let it drop, please do. For my sake don't say anything more about it. I'll explain what I mean some other time."
That had to suffice. There was more music and dancing and the game of "Stealing partners" on the lawn. Tilly asked John if he wanted to play the game, but he confessed that he did not know what it was like. Saying that it would not look well for them to sit together so long, she led him down to the grass, and they stood watching the big circle of couples. It was very simple—far too simple to interest John. A partnerless young man would dart across the ring, select the partner of another, and they would merrily trip back to his "home" on the other side.