"While you have been away growing up too."

"It's the long dress, isn't it?"

"And milking cows and feeding pigs and pitching hay." She gave a toss to
her head and held out her roughened red hands as proof of her assertion.
He stepped closer to her as if to examine them more carefully, but she
swiftly hid them behind her back. The rose, loosened from the tossing
head, fell to the floor, and Dorian picked it up. He sniffed at it then
handed it to her.

"Where did you get it?" he asked.

She reddened. "None of your--Say, sit down, can't you."

Dorian seated himself on the sofa and invited her to sit by him, but she
took a chair by the table.

"You're not very neighborly," he said.

"As neighborly as you are," she retorted.

"What's the matter with you, Carlia?"

"Nothing the matter with me. I'm the same; only I must have grown up, as
you say."

A sound as of someone driving up the road came to them through the
open door. Carlia nervously arose and listened. She appeared to be