"Well, didn't you want me to tell you?"

"I don't know that I wanted you to tell me just that."

"But you asked me what I thought, and that is exactly what I think.
Don't YOU think it is what you should have done?"

Crawford hesitated; then he laughed. "Why yes, confound it, I do," he
admitted. "But I hoped you would tell me that what I did do was right."

"Whether I thought so or not?"

"Why--well--er--yes. Honestly now, didn't you know I wanted you to say
the other thing?"

It was Mary's turn to hesitate; then she, too, laughed.

"Why, yes, I suppose--" she began; and finished with, "Yes, I did."

"Then why didn't you say it? Most girls would."

"Perhaps that is why. I judge that most girls of your acquaintance say
just about what you want them to. Don't you think it is good for you to
be told the truth occasionally?"

It was good for him, of course, and, incidentally, it had the
fascination of novelty. Here was a girl full of fun, ready to take a
joke as well as give one, neither flattering nor expecting flattery, a
country girl who had kept store, yet speaking of that phase of her life
quite as freely as she did of the fashionable Misses Cabot's school,