Mary made no answer, only thrust a knife under the edge of the candy in the largest plate, as if her sole interest in life was testing its hardness.  Then she spread out several sheets of paraffine paper with a great show of indifference.  It had its effect on Elise, and she promptly changed her target back to A.O.  There was no fun in teasing when her arrows made no impression.

Usually A.O. enjoyed it, but she had tangled herself in a web of her own weaving lately, and for the last few days had been in terror lest Elise should find her out.  Inspired by the picture of the handsome young lieutenant on Elise’s desk, and not wanting to seem behind her room-mate in romantic experiences, silly little A.O. had drawn on her imagination for most of the confidences she gave in exchange.  When Elise talked of the lieutenant, A.O. talked of “Jimmy,” adding this trait and that grace until she had built up a beautiful ideal, but a being so different from the original on which she based her tales, that Jimmy himself would never have recognized her dashing hero as the bashful fellow he was accustomed to confront in his mirror.

He had carried her lunch basket when they went to school together, he had patiently worked the sums on her slate with his big clumsy fingers when she cried over the mysteries of subtraction.  Later, when shy and overgrown, and too bashful to speak his admiration, he had followed her around at picnics and parties with a dog-like devotion that touched her.  He had sent her valentines and Christmas cards, and at the last High School commencement when the graduating exercises marked the parting of their ways, he had presented her with a photograph album bound in celluloid, with a bunch of atrociously gaudy pansies and forget-me-nots painted thereon.

In matching stories with Elise, the album and his awkwardness and his plodding embarrassed speech somehow slipped into the background, and it was his devotion and his chivalry she enlarged upon.  Elise, impressed by her hints and allusions, believed in the idealized Jimmy as thoroughly as A.O. intended she should.

For several days A.O. had been in a quandary, for her mother’s last letter had announced a danger which had never entered her thoughts as being imminent.  “Jimmy Woods will be in Washington soon.  He is going up with his uncle, who has some business at the patent office.  I have given him a note to Madam Chartley, granting him my permission to call on you.  He is in an agony of apprehension over the trip to Warwick Hall.  He is so afraid of meeting strange girls.  But I tell him it will be good for him.  It is really amusing to see how interested everybody in town is over Jimmy’s going.  Do be kind to the poor fellow for the sake of your old childish friendship, no matter if he does seem a bit countrified and odd.  He is a dear good boy, and it would never do to let him feel slighted or unwelcome.”