Ransom: “—It isn’t a thing that I care to shout from the house-tops.” He returns from the window to the chimney-piece. “I wrote the rudest kind of note, and sent back her letter and her money in it. She had said that she hoped our acquaintance was not to end with the summer, but that we might sometimes meet in Boston; and I answered that our acquaintance had ended already, and that I should be sorry to meet her anywhere again.”
Grinnidge: “Well, if you wanted to make an ass of yourself, you did it pretty completely.”
Miss Reed, whispering: “How witty he is! Those men are always so humorous with each other.”
Ransom: “Yes; I didn’t do it by halves.”
Miss Reed, whispering: “Oh, that’s funny, too!”
Grinnidge: “It didn’t occur to you that she might feel bound to pay you for the first half-dozen, and was embarrassed how to offer to pay for them alone?”
Miss Reed: “How he does go to the heart of the matter!” She presses Miss Spaulding’s hand in an ecstasy of approval.
Ransom: “Yes, it did—afterward.”
Miss Reed, in a tender murmur: “Oh, poor Oliver!”
Ransom: “And it occurred to me that she was perfectly right in the whole affair.”