"You mean, Alfred"--and she paused at the roadside, and put out her hands to his arms, and studied his face with the eagerness of a child searching for the confirmation of something hoped for and yet not absolutely attainable--"do you mean that it actually made you mad when he told you. Tell me how; tell me why. You wouldn't have--felt that way if--if it had been some other girl, would you?"
"How do I know?" Henley cried, hot from the memory of the thing spoken of. "I don't know whether I'd feel mad or not. I never tried it. It is the first time I was ever up against a thing as aggravating as that was. The idea of him actually trying to kiss you, and--and put his arms around you, and holding to you, and--and--"
"He's a bad, mean thing, ain't he, Alfred?" And her merry laugh rang through the quiet wood, plunging him into deeper mystification than ever. "But of course he couldn't know that I'd not be willing to be hugged and kissed right there at the fence, with a crippled woman peeping out at the window, and a half-blind one standing by, begging for a report of what's taking place. Before you married, Alfred, I'll bet you selected a better place than that when you wanted to kiss a girl. That fellow lives in a big town and I live here in the backwoods, but I can learn him a thing or two."
"You can't fool me." Henley was sure of his ground now. "You wouldn't let that chump kiss you at any time or at any place. I was a fool to ever mention him to you; he ain't worthy to tie the shoes of a woman as noble and sweet and pretty as you are."
"Go it, go it, Alfred!" A delicate flush of delight had overspread her face, which was wreathed in smiles. There was a twinkling light in her eyes, and her laugh rang out sweeter and more merrily than ever. "If Jasper Long only knowed how to say nice things in your roundabout way I'd marry him if he was as poor as Job's turkey. You never have told me in so many words that--that you like my looks or--or like _me_, as for that matter; but when you get worked up, the sweetest things in heaven or earth slip out when you don't know it."
But grimly unpleasant thoughts had fastened themselves on Henley's bewildered brain, and he could only stare at her in sheer agony of suspense.