“I thought you were fooling—that you jumped out to scare me.”
Each colored dully and looked away. The girl’s hat was tossed carelessly at one side. She sat with her chubby arms clasped about her knees.
“Well, I was tryin’,” confessed Nathan nervously.
“But for the land’s sake, why make such an awful job of it? You almost knocked me over.”
“There wasn’t any other way I could do it. My folks never let me go to kissin’ parties or things like that.”
Silence ensued. Then the precocious, oversexed little lady, several years older in worldly wisdom, picked apart a near-by star-flower as she observed coyly:
“You must have wanted to kiss me awful bad to go to all that trouble to do it.”
“I guess I did, Bernie.”
“Then why don’t you make a good job of it—now? There’s no one here to stop you, is there?”
The world reeled. Nathan grew giddy.