“Afraid!” It was one word that Jerry detested.  “Afraid!  That’s funny.  Do you think I’m afraid of you?”

“Yes,” she replied, eyeing him critically.  “I rather think you are.”

“Well, I—­I’m not.  It would take more than a woman to make me afraid.”

Something in the turn of the phrase and tone of voice made her turn and examine him with a new interest.

“You’re a queer boy,” she said.

“How—­queer?” he muttered.

“You look and act as though you’d never seen a girl before.”

If he had known women better he wouldn’t have believed that she meant what she said.  As it was, her wizardry astounded him.

“How can you tell that?”

She was now regarding him wide-eyed in amazement.

“It’s true, then?” she gasped.

“Yes, it’s true.  You’re the first girl that I remember having seen.  But what difference does that make?  Why should I be afraid of you?  You couldn’t hurt a flea.  You can talk pretty well, but talk never killed anybody.”

She seemed stricken suddenly dumb and regarded him with an air which to anyone but Jerry would have shown her as discomfited as he.

“Do you mean that you’ve lived all your life a prisoner inside this wall and never seen a woman?” she asked incredulously.

“That depends upon what you mean by prisoner,” said Jerry.  “If having everything you want, doing everything you want is being a prisoner, I suppose that’s what I am.”

“Extraordinary!  And you’ve had no curiosity to go out—­to see the world?”

“No.  I’m going soon, but I don’t care about it.  There isn’t anything out there half as good as what I’ve got.”

“How do you know if you haven’t been there?”

“Oh, I know.  I’ve heard.  I read a great deal.”

Jerry told me (in our second conversation) that he wondered why he still stood there talking to her.  He supposed it was because he thought he had been impolite enough.  But she made no move to go.

“What have you heard?” she asked again.  “I suppose you thought that a girl had horns and a tail.”

Unconsciously his gaze wandered down over her slim figure.  Then he burst into a sudden fit of laughter.

“You’re funny,” he said.

“Not half as funny as I would be if I had them.”

“You might have a tail twisted under your dress for all I know.  What do girls wear skirts for?”

“To keep them warm.  Why do you wear trousers?”

“Trousers aren’t silly.  Skirts are.”

“That depends on who’s in them.”

He was forced to admit the logic of that.  Skirts might be silly, but she wasn’t.  She interested him, this strange creature that talked back, not in the least like Miss Redwood.  The jade!  Jerry did not know their tricks as I did.  She was reading him, I haven’t a doubt, like an open book.  It was a pity.  I hadn’t yet prepared Jerry for this encounter.  The girl had moved two or three paces away when she paused again.