"Why?" Susan asked, laughing outright. "Oh, she's so darn busy!" Billy said, and returned to his work.
Susan pondered it. She wished she were so "darned" busy that Peter Coleman might have to scheme and plan to see her.
"That's why men's love affairs are considered so comparatively unimportant, I suppose," she submitted presently. "Men are so busy!"
Billy paid no attention to the generality, and Susan pursued it no further.
But after awhile she interrupted him again, this time in rather an odd tone.
"Billy, I want to ask you something---"
"Ask away," said Billy, giving her one somewhat startled glance.
Susan did not speak immediately, and he did not hurry her. A few silent minutes passed before she laid a card carefully in place, studied it with her head on one side, and said casually, in rather a husky voice: "Billy, if a man takes a girl everywhere, and gives her things, and seems to want to be with her all the time, he's in love with her, isn't he?"
Billy, apparently absorbed in what he was doing, cleared his throat before he answered carelessly: "Well, it might depend, Sue. When a man in my position does it, a girl knows gosh darn well that if I spend my good hard money on her I mean business!"
"But--it mightn't be so--with a rich man?" hazarded Susan bravely.
"Why, I don't know, Sue." An embarrassed red had crept into William's cheeks. "Of course, if a fellow kissed her---"
"Oh, heavens!" cried Susan, scarlet in turn, "he never did anything like THAT!"
"Didn't, hey?" William looked blank.
"Oh, never!" Susan said, meeting his look bravely. "He's--he's too much of a gentleman, Bill!"
"Perhaps that's being a gentleman, and perhaps it's not," said Billy, scowling. "He--but he--he makes love to you, doesn't he?" The crude phrase was the best he could master in this delicate matter.
"I don't--I don't know!" said Susan, laughing, but with flaming cheeks. "That's it! He--he isn't sentimental. I don't believe he ever would be, it's not his nature. He doesn't take anything very seriously, you know. We talk all the time, but not about really serious things." It sounded a little lame. Susan halted.
"Of course, Coleman's a perfectly decent fellow---" Billy began, with brotherly uneasiness.
"Oh, absolutely!" Susan could laugh, in her perfect confidence. "He acts exactly as if I were his sister, or another boy. He never even- -put his arm about me," she explained, "and I--I don't know just what he DOES mean---"