"That is being impertinent. If you talk that way I shall call you Mr. Ames and go home!"
"I should like to know why not? If you say I 'm jealous of Cecilia now, or that I ever was, I shall be very, very angry. For it's not true."
"No. You see things very differently now. You told me only last night that Cecilia might have Hartley Wiggins. Assuming that she wants him! And you and he have been good friends, have n't you? You had good times on the other side. And while Cecilia was in town assisting Providence in finding your aunt a cook, you went walking with him."
"I did, I did!" mocked Hezekiah. "And why do you suppose I did?"
"Because Wiggy's the best of fellows; a solid, substantial citizen, who raises wheat to make bread out of."
"And angel food and ginger cookies," added Hezekiah, feeling absently in the pockets of her coat. "No, Chimneys, you 're a nice boy and you don't yell like a wild man when a feather-duster hits you in the dark; but there are some things you don't know yet."
"I am here to grow wise at the feet of Hezekiah, Daughter of Kings. Open the book of wisdom and teach me the alphabet, but don't be sad if I balk at the grammar."
"I never knew all the alphabet myself," said Hezekiah dolefully; then she laughed abruptly. "I was bounced from two convents and no end of Hudson River and Fifth Avenue education shops."
"The brutality of that, Hezekiah, wrings my heart! Yet you are the best teacher I ever had, and I thought I was educated when I met you. But I had only been to school, which is different. Not until the first time our eyes met, not until that supreme moment"--
"Mr. Ames," Hezekiah interrupted, in the happiest possible imitation of Miss Octavia's manner, "if you think that, because I am a poor lone girl who knows nothing of the great, wide world, I am a fair mark for your cajolery, I assure you that you were never more mistaken in your life!"
"You ought n't to mimic your aunt. It is n't respectful; and besides you have something to tell me. What's all this rumpus about Cecilia's silver memorandum-book? Suppose we discuss that and get through with it."
We were sitting on the fallen tree, which lay partly in the lake, and Hezekiah leaned over and broke off a number of reeds from the thicket at the water's edge. Out of her pocket she drew a small penknife and trimmed them uniformly.