self. He might
have considered the help he was getting in that.

"Well, then, you needn't," she conceded, magnanimously, after a moment.
"Only, you ought not to say things about girls that you don't dare tell
them in plain language. If you will say nice things about me, you might
as well say them so I can understand them; only, I do think it's a
little early in our acquaintance."

This cast Bennington still more in perplexity. He had a
pretty-well-defined notion that he was being ridiculed, but concerning
this, just a last grain of doubt remained. She rattled on.

"Well!" said she impatiently, "why don't you say something? Why don't
you take this stick? I don't want it. Men are so stupid!"

That last remark has been made many, many times, and yet it never fails
of its effect, which is at once to invest the speaker with daintiness
indescribable, and to thrust the man addressed into nether inferiority.
Bennington fell to its charm. He took the stake.

"Where does it belong?" he asked.

She pointed silently to a pile of stones. He deposited the stake in its
proper place, and returned to find her seated on the ground, plucking a
handful of the leaves of a little erect herb that grew abundantly in
the hollow. These she rubbed together and held to her face inside the
sunbonnet.

"Who are you, anyway?" asked Bennington abruptly, as he returned.

"D' you ever see this before?" she inquired irrelevantly, looking up
with her eyes as she leaned over the handful. "Good for colds. Makes
your nose feel all funny and prickly."

She turned her hands over and began to drop the leaves one by one.
Bennington caught himself watching her with fascinated interest in
silence. He began to find this one of her most potent charms--the
faculty of translating into a grace so exquisite as almost to realize
the fabled poetry of motion, the least shrug of her shoulders, the
smallest crook of her finger, the slightest toss of her small,
well-balanced head. She looked up.

"Want to smell?" she inquired, and held out her hands with a pretty
gesture.

Not knowing what else to do, Bennington stepped forward obediently and
stooped over. The two little palms held a single crushed bit of the
herb in their cup. They were soft, pink little palms, all wrinkled,
like crumpled rose leaves. Bennington stooped to smell the herb;
instead, he kissed the palms.

The girl sprang to her feet with one indignant motion and faced him.
The eyes now flashed b