"I'm mighty glad you like her. She certainly liked you. She's all the
family I've got, and since you two hit it off so well together I
hope--I hope, Maggie--"
And then Dick plunged into it, stammeringly, but earnestly. He told
her how much he loved her, in old phrases that his boyish ardor made
vibrantly new. He loved her! And if she would marry him, her influence
would make him take the brace all his friends had urged upon him.
She'd make him a man! And she could see how pleased it would make his
sister. And he would do his best to make Maggie happy--his very best!
The young super-adventuress--she herself had mentally used the word
"adventuress" in thinking of herself, as being more genteel and
mentally aristocratic than the cruder words by which Barney and Old
Jimmie and their kind designated a woman accomplice--this young super-
adventuress, who had schemed all this so adroitly, and worked toward
it with the best of her brain and her conscious charm, was seized with
new panic as she listened to the eager torrent of his imploring words,
as she gazed into the quivering earnestness of his frank, blue-eyed
face. She wished she could get out of the machine and run away or sink
through the floor-boards of the car. For she really liked Dick.
"I'm--I'm not so good as you think," she whispered.
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