Page:The leopard's spots - a romance of the white man's burden-1865-1900 (IA leopardsspotsrom00dixo).pdf/274

 "You know you like him better than all the others put together."

"Nonsense. I'm as free as a bird."

"Then what are you blushing for?"

"I'm not." But her face was scarlet.

"You Southern girls are so queer. The moment you like a man you're as sly as a cat, and deny that you even know him. When I find the man I love I don't care who knows it, if he loves me."

"What do you think of Bob St. Clare?"

"I like him."

"Hasn't he made love to you yet?"

"No, and the only one of the crowd who hasn't. I don't mind confessing that I never had love made to me before this visit. In Boston it's a serious thing for a young man to call once. The second call, means a family council, and at the third he must make a declaration of his intentions or face consequences. Down here, the boys don't seem to have anything to do except to make their girl friends happy, and feel they are the queens of the earth, and that their only mission is to minister to them. And some of your girls are engaged to six boys at the same time."

"Don't you like it?"

"It's glorious. I feel that if I hadn't come down here to see you I'd have missed the meaning of life."

"Don't our boys make love beautifully?"

"I never dreamed of anything like it. They make it so seriously, so dead in earnest, you can't help believing them."

"And Bob hasn't said a word?"

"Hasn't breathed a hint."

"Then you have him sure. They are hit hard when they are silent like that. Bob made love to me the second day he ever saw me."