Lydia knelt before her trunk, thinking of the remote events, the extinct associations of a few minutes and hours and days ago; she held some cuffs and collars in her hand, and something that her aunt Maria had said recurred to her. She looked up into the intensely interested face of the boy, and then laughed, bowing her forehead on the back of the hand that held these bits of linen.
The boy blushed. “What are you laughing at?” he asked, half piteously, half indignantly, like a boy used to being badgered.
“Oh, nothing,” said Lydia. “My aunt told me if any of these things should happen to want doing up, I had better get the stewardess to help me.” She looked at the boy in a dreadfully teasing way, softly biting her lip.
“Oh, if you're going to begin that way!” he cried in affliction.
“I'm not,” she answered, promptly. “I like boys. I've taught school two winters, and I like boys first-rate.”
Thomas was impersonally interested again. “Time! You taught school?”
“Why not?”
“You look pretty young for a school-teacher!”
“Now you're making fun of me,” said Lydia, astutely.
The boy thought he must have been, and was consoled. “Well, you began it,” he said.