Page:Jackson Gregory--joyous trouble maker.djvu/215

Rh enhance holding of hands across the water. …

"Sentimental little idiot!"

She jerked herself up and refused to follow seductive memory further in this direction. She was not sentimental, she had never been, she was never going to be. That settled it! … She hadn't looked like a boy and she knew it; he just said that to cover the real look in his eyes. But she had seen it and had remembered it and had understood. He approved of her, deep down in that rollicking heart of his, he very much approved of her. In fact, he wanted to marry her; she knew that, too. If she could only marry Joe Embry … just to punish Bill Steele. … Again the shudder. If she married Embry it would be just on Steele's account and … "I'll marry neither one of them!" whispered Beatrice, as though she scarcely dared take even herself into her confidence, so unsure of herself was she today. "I don't have to, and I won't."

Which, could Bill Steele have heard, would have satisfied him for the present. But she had no intention that he should know anything whatever about her plans. Let him go on, if he liked, thinking that he could have her one day when he came for her. If she could just continue to make him care for her more and more and then, in the ripeness of time, laugh at him and send him away …

"He wouldn't go," she thought ruefully, "He's the most persistent man and the most hateful I ever knew!"

Today, such an uncertain grip did she have on life, she even asked herself the question: "Just why do