"I adore yours, Miss Armstrong," I asserted, yielding
myself further to the joy of idiocy, and delighting in
the mockery and changing moods of her talk. I did
not make her out; indeed, I preferred not to! I was
not then,-and I am not now, thank God,-of an analytical
turn of mind. And as I grow older I prefer,
even after many a blow, to take my fellow human beings
a good deal as I find them. And as for women, old
or young, I envy no man his gift of resolving them into
elements. As well carry a spray of arbutus to the laboratory
or subject the enchantment of moonlight upon
running water to the flame and blow-pipe as try to
analyze the heart of a girl,-particularly a girl who
paddles a canoe with a sure stroke and puts up a good
race with a rabbit.
A lamp shone ahead of us at the entrance of one of
the houses, and lights appeared in all the buildings.
"If I knew your window I should certainly sing under
it,-except that you're going home! You didn't tell
me why they were deporting you."
"I'm really ashamed to! You would never-"
"Oh, yes, I would; I'm really an old friend!" I insisted,
feeling more like an idiot every minute.
"Well, don't tell! But they caught me flirting-with
the grocery boy! Now aren't you disgusted?"
"Thoroughly! I can't believe it! Why, you'd a lot
better flirt with me," I suggested boldly.
"Well, I'm to be sent away for good at Christmas. I
may come back then if I can square myself. My!
That's slang,-isn't it horrid?"
"The Sisters don't like slang, I suppose?"
"They loathe it! Miss Devereux-you know who she
is!-she spies on us and tells."
"You don't say so; but I'm not surprised at her. I've
heard about her!" I declared bitterly.
We had reached the door, and I expected her to fly;
but she lingered a moment.
"Oh, if you know her! Perhaps you're a spy, too!
It's just as well we should never meet again, Mr. Glenarm,"
she declared haughtily.
"The memory of these few meetings will always linger
with me, Miss Armstrong," I returned in an imitation
of her own tone.
"I shall scorn to remember you!"-and she folded
her arms under the cloak tragically.
"Our meetings have been all too few, Miss Armstrong.
Three, exactly, I believe!"
"I see you prefer to ignore the first time I ever saw
you," she said, her hand on the door.
"Out there in your canoe? Never! And you've forgiven
me for overhearing you and the chaplain on the
wall-please!"
She grasped the knob of the door and paused an instant
as though pondering.
"I make it four times, not counting once in the road
and other times when you didn't know, Squire Glenarm!
I'm a foolish little girl to have remembered the first. I
see now how b-l-i-n-d I have been."