Something in his voice made her question the kindness of her method.  Better decline a love than laugh at it.

He talked on of how he had, at various times, cared—­in a way, he said—­for various girls, but had never found the thing he knew was fated to mean the real thing to him; Katie had heard it all before, and always told with that same freedom from suspicion of its ever having been said before.  But perhaps it was the very fact that it was familiar made her listen with a certain tenderness.  For she seemed to be listening, less to him than to the voice of by-gone days—­all those merry, unthinking days which in truth had dealt very kindly and generously with her.

She had a sense of leaving them behind.  That alone was enough to make her feel tenderly toward them.  Even a place within a high-board fence, intolerable if one thought one were to remain in it, became a kindly and a pleasant spot from the top of the fence.  Once free to turn one’s face to the wide sweep without, one was quite ready to cast loving looks back at the enclosure.

And so she softened, prepared to deal tenderly with Captain Prescott, as he seemed then, less the individual than the incarnation of outlived days.

It was into that mellowed, sweetly melancholy mood he sent the following: 

“And so, Katie, I wanted to talk to you about it.  You’re such a good pal—­such a bully sort—­I wanted to tell you that I care for Ann—­and want to marry her.”

She dropped from the high-board fence with a jolt that well-nigh knocked her senseless.

“I suppose,” he said, “that you must have suspected.”

“Well, not exactly suspected,” said Katie, feeling her bumps, as it were.

Her first emotion was that it was pretty shabby treatment to accord one who was at such pains to be kind.  It gave one a distinctly injured feeling—­getting all sweet and mellow only to be dashed to the ground and let lie there in that foolish looking—­certainly foolish feeling heap!

But as soon as she had picked herself up—­and Katie was too gamey to be long in picking herself up—­she wondered what under heaven she was going to do about things!  What had she let herself in for now!  The pains of an injured dignity—­throb of a pricked self love—­were forgotten in this real problem, confronting her.  She even grew too grave to think about how funny it was.

For Katie saw this as genuinely serious.

“Harry,” she asked, “have you said anything to your mother?”

“Well, not said anything,” he laughed.

“But she knows?”

“Mother’s keen,” he replied.

“I once thought I was,” was Katie’s unspoken comment.

“And have you—­you are so good as to confide in me, so I presume to ask questions—­have you said anything to Ann?”

“No, not said anything,” he laughed again.

“But she knows?”

“I don’t know.  I wondered if you did.”