“I? Not in the least. I assure you I trouble myself very little about the morals of my associates. I'm not fond of crows; but it is their voices rather than their habits I object to. I can't stand their eternal 'cawing!'--it drives me mad.”
“I suppose foxes are pernicious beasts, also,” said Betty, as she walked on; “but there's an old red fox in the woods that I've been feeding for years. I don't know anything that foxes like to eat except chickens, but I carry him a basket of potatoes and turnips and bread, and pile them up under a pine tree; it's just as well for him to acquire the taste for them, isn't it?”
She smiled at Dan above her fur tippet, and he forgot her words in watching the animation come and go in her face. He fell to musing over her decisive little chin, the sensitive curves of her nostrils and sweet wide mouth, and above all over her kind yet ardent look, which gave the peculiar beauty to her eyes.
“Ah, is there anything in heaven or earth that you don't like?” he asked, as he gazed at her.
“That I don't like? Shall I really tell you?”
He bent toward her over his armful of holly.
“I have a capacious breast for secrets,” he assured her.
“Will you have me swear?” he glanced about him.
“Not by the inconstant moon,” she entreated merrily.
“Well, by my 'gracious self'; what's the rest of it?”
She coloured and drew away from him. His eyes made her self-conscious, ill at ease; the very carelessness of his look disconcerted her.
“No, do not swear,” she begged. “I shall trust you with even so weighty a confidence. I do not like--”
She made a little gesture of alarm. “From fear of the wrath to come,” she admitted.
“Of my wrath?” he regarded her with amazement. “Oh, don't you like _me_?” he exclaimed.
“You! Yes, yes--but--have mercy upon your petitioner. I do not like your cravats.”
She shut her eyes and stood before him with lowered head.
“My cravats!” cried Dan, in dismay, as his hand went to his throat, “but my cravats are from Paris--Charlie Morson brought them over. What is the matter with them?”
“They--they're too fancy,” confessed Betty. “Papa wears only white, or black ones you know.”
“Too fancy! Nonsense! do you want to send me back to grandfather's stocks, I wonder? It's just pure envy--that's what it is. Never mind, I'll give you the very best one I've got.”