Page:Hard-pan; a story of bonanza fortunes (IA hardpanbonanza00bonnrich).pdf/111

Rh "You look as if you 'd been crying," he said.

"Oh, what a silly idea!" answered Letitia, with a laugh that would have been quite successful on the stage, but could not deceive the enamoured Tod; "I have a cold."

"It 's not that you don't look as pretty as usual. No matter what you did, you 'd always be out o' sight. But it just gives me the willies to think of your being down on your luck. Honest—I can't stand it."

Letitia looked away, more to avert her face from his searching gaze than from embarrassment.

"Everybody gets blue now and then," she said carelessly.

"But you ought n't to. I 'm the one that ought to get blue—black and blue."

"I guess we all do, more or less."

"If you 'd just ease up on the way you keep giving me the marble heart," continued Tod, dropping his voice to the key of tenderness, "I 'd see to it that there 'd never be a thing to make you blue. Everything would go your way. I 'd see to it."

Letitia looked at him with a little vexed frown.

"Dear me, Tod!" she said crossly, "you 're not going to propose to me here at dinner, are you, with everybody listening, too?"