"Would you mind telling me why not?" he says. "Since you say you want to, you know."
I couldn't think of anything but the truth.
"I'm trying to act as nice as I can," I says, "since I've been to this school. And I guess it's nicer not to go with you."
His face was pleasant when he kept on looking at me, though he was laughing at me, too.
"Look here, then," he said, "will you go with my sister and me some day? As a favor to me, you know—so you'll get her here on time."
"Oh," I says, "I'd love to!"
"Done," he said. "Tell me your name, and I'll tell her we've got an engagement with her."
When he'd gone I jumped down from the wall and ran pell-mell up the hill. Before I knew it, I was humming. Ain't it the funniest thing how one little bit of a nice happening from somebody makes you all over like new?
Two days afterward I was leaving the dining-room when I saw Miss Antoinette Massy coming toward me. My heart begun to beat. She was so beautiful and dressed like a dream. She's always seemed to me somebody far off, and different—like somebody that had died and been born again from the way I was.