"Now, what are you doing here?" she demanded of him as he turned and
walked by her side. "Isn't it too bad of you, Reggie! I told you that Miss
Chaplin had heard of your 'hanging about' for me, as she called it; and
that I had promised it should not occur again. I have gone a longer way
home, through far less pleasant streets, to escape you--yet here you are,
waylaying me again."
"Don't be angry with me, dear; I can't help it," the young man pleaded.
"Can't help it!" she repeated, softly scornful. "You'll get me dismissed
from the school. That will be our next misfortune."
"I wish the old woman would dismiss you. I wish she'd turn you out, so
that you hadn't a penny except what I could give you; or anywhere to go
except to come to me."
"How many times have I asked you not to say that sort of thing?"
"But, hang it all, why shouldn't I? A man knows his own mind at my age, I
suppose--?"
"You thought you knew it a year ago when all the town was talking of you
and Harriet Hart. You thought you knew it two--or was it three years
before that?--when you said you were in love with Bessie."
"Parcel of silly rot, Deleah! They tell you anything, my dear. Don't you
believe it. I've never been in love--not head over ears, as I am now--in
all my life before.
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