Part 51

She bit her lip, then laughed, her gray eyes searching his. "Ask it, Mr. Burleson, for if I lived a million years I'm perfectly certain I could never guess what you are going to say next."

"It's only this," he said, with a worried look, "I don't know your first name."

"Why should you?" she demanded, amused, yet instinctively resentful. "I don't know yours, either, Mr. Burleson--and I don't even ask you."

"Oh, I'll tell you," he said; "my name is only John William. Now will you tell me yours?"

She remained silent, coping with a candor that she had not met with since she went to parties in a muslin frock. She remembered one boy who had proposed elopement on ten minutes' acquaintance. Burleson, somehow or other, reminded her of that boy.

"My name," she said, carelessly, "is Constance."

"I like that name," said Burleson.

It was pretty nearly the last straw. Never had she been conscious of being so spontaneously, so unreasonably approved of since that wretched boy had suggested flight at her first party. She could not separate the memory of the innocent youth from Burleson; he was intensely like that boy; and she had liked the boy, too--liked him so much that in those ten heavenly minutes' acquaintance she was half persuaded to consent--only there was nowhere to fly to, and before they could decide her nurse arrived.

"If you had not told me your first name," said Burleson, "how could anybody make out a check to your order?"

"Is that why--" she began; and without the slightest reason her heart gave a curious little tremor of disappointment.

"You see," he said, cheerfully, "it was not impertinence--it was only formality."

"I see," she said, approvingly, and began to find him a trifle tiresome.

Meanwhile he had confidently skipped to another subject. "Phosphates and nitrogen are what those people need for their farms. Now if you prepare your soil--do your own mixing, of course--then begin with red clover, and plough--"

Her gray eyes were so wide open that he stopped short to observe them; they were so beautiful that his observation continued until she colored furiously. It was the last straw.

"The fire is out, I think," she said, calmly, rising to her feet; "my duty here is ended, Mr. Burleson."

"Oh--are you going?" he asked, with undisguised disappointment. She regarded him in silence for a moment. How astonishingly like that boy he was--this six-foot--

"Of course I am going," she said, and wondered why she had said "of course" with emphasis. Then she whistled to her mare.

"May I ride with you to the house?" he asked, humbly.

She was going to say several things, all politely refusing. What she did say was, "Not this time."

Then she was furious with herself, and began to hate him fiercely, until she saw something in his face that startled her. The mare came up; she flung the bridle over hastily, set foot to metal, and seated herself in a flash. Then she looked down at the man beside her, prepared for his next remark.

It came at once. "When may we ride together, Miss Elliott?"

She became strangely indulgent. "You know," she said, as though instructing youth, "that the first proper thing to do is to call upon my father, because he is older than you, and he is physically unable to make the first call."

"Then by Wednesday we may ride?" he inquired, so guilessly that she broke into a peal of delicious laughter.

"How old are you, Mr. Burleson? Ten?"

"I feel younger," he said.

"So do I," she said. "I feel like a little girl in a muslin gown." Two spots of color tinted her cheeks. He had never seen such beauty in human guise, and he came very near saying so. Something in the aromatic mountain air was tempting her to recklessness. Amazed, exhilarated by the temptation, she sat there looking down at him; and her smile was perilously innocent and sweet.

"Once," she said, "I knew a boy--like you--when I wore a muslin frock, and I have never forgotten him. He was extremely silly."

"Do you remember only silly people?"