Page:The Soft Side (New York, The Macmillan Company, 1900).djvu/275

Rh know it—what I was moved to stay at home for.' She spoke now—out of her contentment—as if to oblige with explanations.

But it was strange how Miss Susan met her. 'You stay at home for him? I don't!' She fairly laughed at the triviality of the idea.

Miss Amy was naturally struck by it and after an instant even nettled. 'Then why did you do so this afternoon?'

'Oh, it wasn't for that!' Miss Susan lightly quavered. She made her distinction. 'I really wasn't well.'

At this her cousin brought it out. 'But he has been with you?'

'My dear child,' said Susan, launched unexpectedly even to herself, 'he's with me so often that if I put myself out for him!' But as if at sight of something that showed, through the twilight, in her friend's face, she pulled herself up.

Amy, however, spoke with studied stillness. 'You've ceased then to put yourself out? You gave me, you remember, an instance of how you once did!' And she tried, on her side, a laugh.

'Oh yes—that was at first. But I've seen such a lot of him since. Do you mean you hadn't?' Susan asked. Then as her companion only sat looking at her: 'Has this been really the first time for you—since we last talked?'

Miss Amy for a minute said nothing. 'You've actually believed me'

'To be enjoying on your own account what I enjoy? How couldn't I, at the very least,' Miss Susan cried—'so grand and strange as you must allow me to say you've struck me?'

Amy hesitated. 'I hope I've sometimes struck you as decent!'

But it was a touch that, in her friend's almost amused preoccupation with the simple fact, happily fell short. 'You've only been waiting for what didn't come?'