if Crawford did, either.  He liked Mary Lathrop.  She was a remarkably pretty girl but, unlike other pretty girls he had known—­and as good-looking college football stars are privileged beyond the common herd, he had known at least several—­she did not flirt with him, nor look admiringly up into his eyes, nor pronounce his jokes “killingly funny,” nor flatter him in any way.  If the jokes were funny she laughed a healthy, genuine laugh, but if, as sometimes happened, they were rather feeble, she was quite likely to tell him so.  She did not always agree with his views, having views of her own on most subjects, and if he asked her opinion the answer he received was always honest, if not precisely what he expected or hoped.

“By George!  You’re frank, at any rate,” he observed, rather ruefully, after asking her opinion as to a point of conduct and receiving it forthwith.

“Didn’t you want me to be?” asked Mary.  “You asked me what I thought you should have done and I told you.”

“Yes, you did.  You certainly told me.”

“Well, didn’t you want me to tell you?”

“I don’t know that I wanted you to tell me just that.”

“But you asked me what I thought, and that is exactly what I think.  Don’t you think it is what you should have done?”

Crawford hesitated; then he laughed.  “Why yes, confound it, I do,” he admitted.  “But I hoped you would tell me that what I did do was right.”

“Whether I thought so or not?”

“Why—­well—­er—­yes.  Honestly now, didn’t you know I wanted you to say the other thing?”

It was Mary’s turn to hesitate; then she, too, laughed.

“Why, yes, I suppose—­” she began; and finished with, “Yes, I did.”

“Then why didn’t you say it?  Most girls would.”

“Perhaps that is why.  I judge that most girls of your acquaintance say just about what you want them to.  Don’t you think it is good for you to be told the truth occasionally?”

It was good for him, of course, and, incidentally, it had the fascination of novelty.  Here was a girl full of fun, ready to take a joke as well as give one, neither flattering nor expecting flattery, a country girl who had kept store, yet speaking of that phase of her life quite as freely as she did of the fashionable Misses Cabot’s school, not at all ashamed to say she could not afford this or that, simple and unaffected but self-respecting and proud; a girl who was at all times herself and retained her poise and common sense even in the presence of handsome young demigod who had made two touchdowns against Yale.