curiously, "I would rather you'd remember me. Good-by--or, rather,
good-afternoon--if I'm to be remembered, Leon."
"Good-afternoon, ma'am."
She moved away, and presently disappeared among the laurels. But her
last words were ringing in his ears. "Leon"--everybody else called him
"Lee" for brevity; "Leon"--it was pretty as she said it.
He turned away. But it so chanced that their parting was not to pass
unnoticed, for, looking up the hill, Leonidas perceived his elder sister
and little brother coming down the road, and knew that they must have
seen him from the hilltop. It was like their "snoopin'"!
They ran to him eagerly.
"You were talking to the stranger," said his sister breathlessly.
"She spoke to me first," said Leonidas, on the defensive.
"What did she say?"
"Wanted to know the eleckshun news," said Leonidas with cool mendacity,
"and I told her."
This improbable fiction nevertheless satisfied them. "What was she like?
Oh, do tell us, Lee!" continued his sister.
Nothing would have delighted him more than to expatiate upon her
loveliness, the soft white beauty of her hands, the "cunning" little
puckers around her lips, her bright tender eyes, the angelic texture
of her robes, and the musical tinkle of her voice. But Leonidas had no
confidant, and what healthy boy ever trusted his sister in such matter!
"YOU saw what she was like," he said, with evasive bluntness.
"But, Lee"--
But Lee was adamant. "Go and ask her," he said.
"Like as not you were sassy to her, and she shut you up," said his
sister artfully. But even this cruel suggestion, which he could have so
easily flouted, did not draw him, and his ingenious relations flounced
disgustedly away.
But Leonidas was not spared any further allusion to the fair stranger;
for the fact of her having spoken to him was duly reported at home, and
at dinner his reticence was again sorely attacked. "Just like her, in
spite of all her airs and graces, to hang out along the fence like any
ordinary hired girl, jabberin' with anybody that went along the road,"
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