mother complains of. I want to know, what does it mean?"

She paused and, slackening her steps, looked at the lighted train
drawing itself smoothly over Hungerford Bridge.

"It means, I should say, that he finds you chilly and unsympathetic."

Katharine laughed with round, separate notes of genuine amusement.

"It's time I jumped into a cab and hid myself in my own house," she
exclaimed.

"Would your mother object to my being seen with you? No one could
possibly recognize us, could they?" Rodney inquired, with some
solicitude.

Katharine looked at him, and perceiving that his solicitude was
genuine, she laughed again, but with an ironical note in her laughter.

"You may laugh, Katharine, but I can tell you that if any of your
friends saw us together at this time of night they would talk about
it, and I should find that very disagreeable. But why do you laugh?"

"I don't know. Because you're such a queer mixture, I think. You're
half poet and half old maid."

"I know I always seem to you highly ridiculous. But I can't help
having inherited certain traditions and trying to put them into
practice."