"Jack!" she exclaimed, "that is the most--most degraded thing I ever heard you utter!"
"I'm accustoming you, by degrees, to my repertoire. With infinite precautions you will, in time, be able to endure much worse than this," he explained kindly. "Now, what shall we try next, dear lady? I have a little song called: 'Only a pint of shoe strings!'"
"Don't you dare attempt it! ... Jack, _please_ go away. Won't you, when I ask it?"
"She mutters the unthinkable," he said, shaking his head. "My music has unseated her reason. By and by she will begin to moan and revive."
"It's perfectly outrageous," she said, tearing up what she had written, and moving aside a little so that sufficient space remained for--her sister, perhaps. So he entered the summer house and waited for an invitation, bland, cheerful, irresistible.
"I had no idea I was so pitiably weak-minded," she said.
He accepted the avowal as his invitation, and seated himself.
"Silvette," he said genially, "what are we going to do to-day?"
"Why, you and I. Who cares what the others do in this mad world, dear lady?"
"I don't know about the world," she said, "but there's one girl in it who is mad; and she's going to her room to write letters."
"Shall, or will?" he inquired, guilelessly, "People mix up those two auxiliaries so persistently that there's no telling what anybody really means in these days."
She considered a moment, then turned and looked at him.
"Jack," she said sweetly, "don't follow me about?"
"I? Follow _you_! That's more madness, dear lady. Who on earth ever whispered to you that I could ever do such a----"
Her pretty, dark eyes were serious enough, even appealing. He became solemn at once.
"You have forced me to say this," she ventured. "I didn't wish to; I thought you'd understand, but you don't seem to. So I am compelled to say to you that--it is--better taste for you to--not to----"
She hesitated, glanced up at him, colored brightly.
"You know perfectly well what I mean! And there you sit, letting me try to tell you as nicely as I can----"
"About you and me!" she said, incensed. "You know perfectly well that I've been obliged to avoid being alone with you."
"Because," she said, intensely annoyed, "I am employed by your parents, and you are an only son of Mr. Jacob Rivett.... Is that unmistakable?"