“There is one big reason and there are lots of little ones.  Which will you have first?”

“The little ones, please.”

“Then, listen; you are like a baby because you are impatient, because you are spoilt, because when you want anything you think that you must have it, and because you like to be walked with.”

“Are those the little reasons,” he said when she paused; “and what’s the big one?”

“The big one,” she said slowly; “Oh, I’m afraid that you won’t like the big one!”

“Perhaps it will be all the better for me if I don’t,” he laughed; “at any rate I beg and pray and plead to know it.”

“What a dear boy!” she laughed.  “If you want to know as badly as that, I’d have to tell you anyhow, whether I wanted to or not.  It’s because I’m so much the oldest.”

“Oh!” said Jack, much disappointed.  “Is that why?”

“And then too,” she continued, “you seem even younger because of your being so unsophisticated.”

“So I am unsophisticated, am I?” he asked grimly.

“Yes,” she said nodding; “at least you impress me so.”

“I’m glad of that,” he said after a little pause.

She looked up quickly.

“Truly?”

“Yes, indeed.”

“Oh,” she laughed, “if you say that, then I shall know that you are less unsophisticated than I thought you were.”

“Why so?” he asked surprised.

“Don’t you know that meek, mild men always try to insinuate that they are regular fire-eaters, and vice versa?  Well, it’s so—­and it’s so every time.  There was once a man who was kissing me, and he drew my hands up around his neck in such a clever, gentle way that I was absolutely positive that he had had no end of practice drawing arms up in that way and I just couldn’t help saying:  ‘Oh, how many women you must have kissed!’ What do you think he answered?—­merely smiled and said:  ’Not so many as you might imagine.’  He showed how much he knew by the way he answered, for oh! he had.  I found that out afterwards.”

“What did you do then?” he asked, frowning.  “Cut him?”

“No; I married him.  Why, of course I was going to marry him when he kissed me, or I wouldn’t have let him kiss me.  Do you suppose I let men kiss me as a general thing?  What are you thinking of?”

“I was thinking of you,” he said.  “It’s a horrible habit I’ve fallen into lately.  But, never mind; keep on talking.”

“I don’t remember what I was saying,” she said.  “Oh, yes, I do too.  About men, about good and bad men.  Now, even if I didn’t know how much trouble you’d made in the world, I’d divine it all the instant that you were willing to admit being unsophisticated.  People always crave to be the opposite of what they are; the drug shops couldn’t sell any peroxide of hydrogen if that wasn’t so.”

He laughed and forgot his previous vexation.