You don't think I'm utterly frivolous and unstable, do
you?"
"Haven't you always been famed for your poise?" came back the
uncompromising voice she knew so well.
"Are you--you aren't laughing at me, are you?" she hesitated. "Because
I don't think I am in the mood to be laughed at. And I have poise. I
am not a child. But looking back now, I can't quite account for all
my--shall I call it cordiality? Don't you believe, Miriam, that it was
because I wanted to make up, a little, for the way I treated him when
he was a boy?"
"Maybe!" agreed Miriam, unenthusiastically.
"Because I did treat him abominably," went on the drowsy voice. "And,
do you know, all day, even when we seemed so--such good friends, I
still felt as though he was on guard against any repetition of such a
slight. I wouldn't want him to feel that way, but it was there just
the same, even in the way he received the invitation to my party. It
was on the tip of my tongue to tell him that there are men who--who'd
almost charter a liner to come--if I'd invite them. It would have
sounded conceited, but I wanted to _jolt_ him! And he just said he'd
come if he could!"
"He has his work," Miriam answered, and into her voice crept that
wearied, indescribably hard note which the younger girl couldn't
understand. "He has to work, and a lot of those others would be a lot
more worth asking, if they had to work, too.
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