"
"Perhaps it is a sort of pose. If so, it's a self-protective one."
"Suppose I asked you to come to New York?"
Intrepid though she was, her soul quaked a little at her own words,
foreseeing those mail-order-cut clothes and the resolute butterflyness
of the tie greeting her on Fifth Avenue.
"What to do?"
"Sell tickets at the Grand Central Station, of course!" she shot back at
him. "Ban, you _are_ aggravating! 'What to do?' Father would find you
some sort of place while you were fitting in."
'No. I wouldn't take a job from you any more than I'd take anything
else."
"You carry principles to the length of absurdity. Come and get your own
job, then. You're not timid, are you?"
"Not particularly. I'm just contented."
At that provocation her femininity flared. "Ban," she cried with
exasperation and appeal enchantingly mingled, "aren't you going to miss
me at all when I go?"
"I've been trying not to think of that," he said slowly.
"Well, think of it," she breathed. "No!" she contradicted herself
passionately. "Don't think of it. I shouldn't have said that.... I don't
know what is the matter with me to-day, Ban. Perhaps I _am_ fey." She
smiled to him slantwise.
"It's the air," he answered judicially. "There's another storm brewing
somewhere or I'm no guesser.
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