CHAPTER XXIV.
“Sweetheart, will you go with me to the dance this evening?”
“I’ve promised to go with Frank—so there! And I wish, Tom Hinton, you wouldn’t call me that babyish name, Sweetheart. I can’t bear it!”
“What then?” asked Tom Hinton, a dapper young man, with dry-goods clerk written all over him too plainly to be mistaken.
“Why, Thea, of course,” said the beautiful golden-haired girl. “You knew when I went away to school we made that name up out of Sweetheart. I was called so by every one at school, and I want to be called so by my home-folks, too.”
“Sweetheart is so—much sweeter. I like to call you that,” said the young man, giving her a tender look.
“No matter, I won’t have it! Mind that, please,” the girl answered, saucily tossing her long golden curls and pouting her ripe red lips in a sort of disdain.
“What made you promise Frank? Didn’t you know perfectly well that I was going to ask you?”
“Maybe I did, and maybe that’s the reason I asked Frank to ask me first. Ha! ha!”
No words could describe the exquisite unconscious coquetry of the girl’s looks and manner—coquetry blended with airy contempt of the tenderness that shone in the man’s blue eyes—maidenhood is so cruel.
Tom Hinton’s face flushed deeply, and he chewed the ends of his small, fair mustache uneasily.
“Do you mean that you prefer my brother to me?” he asked, angrily; and Thea laughed again, and answered, with inexcusable slang for a boarding-school miss:
“That’s about the size of it, Mr. Hinton.”
The young man regarded her wrathfully a moment, then answered with an irrepressible sneer:
“Maybe you don’t know that Frank’s got a sweetheart already when you’re throwing yourself at his head so boldly?”
The exquisite creature laughed again. She seemed fairly bubbling over with mirth and gayety. Her blue and brilliant eyes sparkled with mischief.
“Oh, yes, I know it, thank you,” she said, nodding her bright head with a bird-like motion. “That’s the very reason I like him,” she continued. “His heart is set on some one else, and he isn’t always making me sick by talking love to me, as you have done, Tom Hinton, the whole three weeks since I came back from school.”
“Oh, come, you needn’t pretend you don’t like to be made love to. All girls do,” the young man answered, a little sulkily; but Thea fired up in a minute, and answered with childish petulance:
“That’s a story. I don’t, for one. I like to go with young men and have a good time, just as well as any other girl does, but if a fellow begins to talk love to me—faugh! it makes me sick!” disdainfully.
Tom Hinton was watching her doubtfully. He did not half believe in the indifference she professed. He believed it was more than half coquetry—girlish coquetry—that invited pursuit.
“See here, Thea,” he said, half wistfully, half with a man’s masterful air, “I don’t believe you mean half you say. If I did I should feel mighty bad, I tell you, for I’ve got my heart set on you, and I made up my mind as long as three years ago that I’d have you for my wife if I could get you.”
Thea stared. Her short upper lip curled in scorn.
“Tom Hinton, you must be crazy! The idea of picking me out, when I was only fourteen years old, for your wife! Well, I like your impudence!” she ejaculated.
“I am glad you like it. I thought you would,” he answered, falling into her mood of wicked banter. “Well, what do you say, my darling? Will you marry me?” tenderly.
“Not to save your life, Tom Hinton!” answered she, heartlessly, darting away.