big-hearted, under their rough exterior. Your letters were full of it--and
how chivalrous they all are toward nice women."

She laid her head coaxingly against his shoulder. "Let's go back, Manley.
I--_want_ to see a _charivari_, dear. It will be fun. I want to write all
about it to the girls. They'll be perfectly wild with envy." She struggled
with her conventional upbringing. "And even if some of them are slightly
under the influence--of liquor, we needn't _meet_ them. You needn't
introduce those at all, and I'm sure they will understand,"

"Don't be silly, Val!" Fleetwood did not mean to be rude, but a faint
glimmer of her romantic viewpoint--a viewpoint gained chiefly from current
fiction and the stage--came to him and contrasted rather brutally with the
reality. He did not know how to make her understand, without incriminating
himself. His letters had been rather idealistic, he admitted to himself.
They had been written unthinkingly, because he wanted her to like this big
land; naturally he had not been too baldly truthful in picturing the place
and the people. He had passed lightly over their faults and thrown the
limelight on their virtues; and so he had aided unwittingly the stage and
the fiction she had read, in giving her a false impression.

Offended at his words and his tone, she drew away from him and glanced
wistfully back toward the town, as if she meditated a haughty return to the
hotel. She ended by seating herself upon a projecting tie.

"Oh, very well, my lord," she retorted, "I shall try and not be silly, but
merely idiotic, as you would have me. You and your friend!" She was very
angry, but she was perfectly well-bred, she hoped. "If I might venture a
word," she began again ironically, "it seems to me that your friend has
been playing a practical joke upon you. He evidently has no intention of