Page:Adams - A Child of the Age.djvu/98

86 'Do you want to know my name?' she asked with a drop in her voice. 'Only if you care to tell me,' I answered, a little sorry for my first attempt at some sort of formality or other. '’Owlet is my name: I'm from Rutland. Rosy's my Christian name.—But I hope you won't call me Miss 'Owlet.'

'Why do you hope not?'

'Oh, Howlet is such a horrid name!'

I could not help laughing. Then she laughed.

'But what shall I call you?' I asked.

'You called me "child" once. I'm not a child. I'm seventeen.'

I smiled at her. She at once caught up the bag of grapes, undid the mouth, and offered it to me.

'Then I beg your pardon,' I said.

She pouted:

'—But you have not taken any!' And our eyes met, and the bag was once more offered, and I dipped two fingers into it and lifted a big bunch half out (she looking at me all the time, and I at the bag-mouth), and stretched out my other hand to break off a portion of the bunch, and had broken off a portion, and was about to drop the remains of the original bunch into the bag again, when she drew back her arm quickly and said: 'That's not fair!' Then she took out another bunch: squashed up the bag in her hands: threw it on to the floor, and came to me holding it up with two fingers in the air. Our eyes met again, and I stretched up my hand and took it. She smiled at me. A small thin black kitten ran out and began chasing the paper-bag.

She turned, saw it, and cried out:

'Minnie, Minnie!—Oh, you silly thing! Let it alone, can't you?' She turned to me again:

'That 's my cat Minnie. Isn't she a beauty?'

'Well … yes,' I said.

'Why, I should think so!—Now I must go. I oughtn't to have let you talk so much: it's not good