"
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.
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