"We have an encyclopaedia of our own at home," she interrupted
coldly. "I didn't climb this mountain to talk about beetles."

"Well, I'll talk some more about you, if you'll give me a little
time to think."

"I think you are very impertinent. I don't wish to talk about
myself. Just because I asked your advice in my difficulties, you
assume that I'm a little egoist--"

"Oh, please don't--"

"Don't interrupt. I'm very much offended, and I'm glad we are
never going to meet. Just as I was beginning to like you, too,"
she added, with malice. "Good-bye!"

"Good-bye," he answered mournfully.

But his attentive ears failed to discern the sound of departing
footsteps. The breeze whispered in the tree-tops. A sulphur-yellow
bird, of French extraction, perched in a flowering bush,
insistently demanded: "Qu'est-ce qu'il dit? Qu'est-ce qu'il dit?"
--What's he say? WHAT'S he say?--over and over again, becoming
quite wrathful because neither he nor any one else offered the
slightest reply or explanation. The girl sympathized with the
bird. If the particular he whose blond top she could barely see by
peeping over the rock would only say something, matters would be
easier for her. But he didn't. So presently, in a voice of
suspiciously saccharine meekness, she said:--