She noticed his mouth's little dragging droop at the corners and thought:
"Oh, you're cross. If you're cross with Prissie--if you make her unhappy"
--but when he caught her looking at him the cross lips drew back in a
sudden, white, confiding smile. And when he spoke she understood why he
had been irresistible to Priscilla.

He had come three Sundays now, four perhaps; she had lost count. They were
all sitting out on the lawn under the cedar. Suddenly, as if he had only
just thought of it, he said:

"It's extraordinarily good of you to have me."

"Oh, well," her mother said, "Prissie is Hatty's greatest friend."

"I supposed that was why you do it."

He didn't want it to be that. He wanted it to be himself. Himself. He was
proud. He didn't like to owe anything to other people, not even to
Prissie.

Her father smiled at him. "You must give us time."

He would never give it or take it. You could see him tearing at things in
his impatience, to know them, to make them give themselves up to him at
once. He came rushing to give himself up, all in a minute, to make himself
known.

"It isn't fair," he said. "I know you so much better than you know me.
Priscilla's always talking about you. But you don't know anything about
_me_."