“I guess I realize it,” said the girl.
“Well, it's a pootty plain case, that's a fact,” Whitwell conceded. She was silent, and he asked: “How did he come to tell you?”
“It's what he came up for. He began to tell me at once. I was certain there was some trouble.”
“Was it his notion to come, I wonder, or Mr. Westover's?”
“It was his. But Mr. Westover told him to break off with me, and keep on with her, if she would let him.”
“I guess that was pootty good advice,” said Whitwell, letting his face betray his humorous relish of it. “I guess there's a pair of 'em.”
“She was not playing any one else false,” said Cynthia, bitterly.
“Well, I guess that's so, too,” her father assented. “'Ta'n't so much of a muchness as you might think, in that light.” He took refuge from the subject in an undirected whistle.
After a moment the girl asked, forlornly: “What should you do, father, if you were in my place?”
“Well, there I guess you got me, Cynthy,” said her father. “I don't believe 't any man, I don't care how old he is, or how much experience he's had, knows exactly how a girl feels about a thing like this, or has got any call to advise her. Of course, the way I feel is like takin' the top of his head off. But I d' know,” he added, “as that would do a great deal of good, either. I presume a woman's got rather of a chore to get along with a man, anyway. We a'n't any of us much to brag on. It's out o' sight, out o' mind, with the best of us, I guess.”