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Susy, a story of the Plains by Bret Harte
page 63 of 175 (36%)
She laughed at his changed expression, and then swung herself easily to
a sitting posture on the low projecting branch of a hemlock. The act
was still girlish, but, nevertheless, she looked down upon him in
a superior, patronizing way. "Now, Clarence," she said, with a
half-abstracted manner, "don't you be a big fool! If you talk that way
to mother, she'll only tell you to wait two or three years until you
know your own mind, and she'll pack me off to that horrid school again,
besides watching me like a cat every moment you are here. If you want
to stay here, and see me sometimes like this, you'll just behave as you
have done, and say nothing. Do you see? Perhaps you don't care to come,
or are satisfied with Mary and mother. Say so, then. Goodness knows, I
don't want to force you to come here."

Modest and reserved as Clarence was generally, I fear that bashfulness
of approach to the other sex was not one of these indications. He walked
up to Susy with appalling directness, and passed his arm around her
waist. She did not move, but remained looking at him and his intruding
arm with a certain critical curiosity, as if awaiting some novel
sensation. At which he kissed her. She then slowly disengaged his arm,
and said:--

"Really, upon my word, Clarence," in perfectly level tones, and slipped
quietly to the ground.

He again caught her in his arms, encircling her disarranged hair and
part of the beribboned hat hanging over her shoulder, and remained
for an instant holding her thus silently and tenderly. Then she freed
herself with an abstracted air, a half smile, and an unchanged color
except where her soft cheek had been abraded by his coat collar.

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