added: "I'm afraid I was a little bitter a few hours ago. And then
I saw you, just an honest, brave, bewildered little girl,
wondering why the deuce they all make such a fuss about nothing--
clothes and bridge parties and dinners--"

"They never SAY anything worth while!" Nina said, with daring.
There was exquisite homage in the dropped, listening head, the
eyes that smiled so close to her own. "But if I tell Mother that,
she thinks I'm crazy!" she added, lapsing into the school
vernacular against a desperate effort to sustain the conversation
at his level.

"Because you're a little natural rebel," interpreted the man,
smilingly. "And that's the price we pay for it!"

"I'm afraid I've always been a rebel, then!" confessed Nina.

"Yes, those eyes of yours say that," Blondin conceded, sadly. "And
it doesn't make for happiness, Little Girl!" he warned her.

Nina narrowed her eyes, and stared into the green garden. She was
not wearing her glasses to-day, and hers were fine eyes, albeit a
trifle prominent, and with a somewhat strained expression.

"Oh, I know that!" she said. "Mother and Father," she confided,
with the merciless calm of seventeen, "they'd like me to be
exactly like all the other girls, flirting and dressing, and
rushing about all day and all night! But oh--how I hate it! Oh, I
like the girls and boys--truly I do, and I am popular with them
all, I know that! But 'CASES'!" said Nina with scorn.