"No; it's so. And if you care at all about—about knowing a girl who'd like someone to know her———"
"Just 'someone?' That's disappointing."
"Well—you," she said.
"Tell me how 'careful' you want me to be, then!"
"Well, don't you think it would be nice if you didn't give anybody the chance to talk about me the way—the way I've just been talking about Henrietta Lamb?"
With that they laughed together, and he said,
"You may be cutting me off from a great deal of information, you know."
"Yes," Alice admitted. "Somebody might begin to praise me to you, too; so it's dangerous to ask you to change the subject if I ever happen to be mentioned. But after all———" She paused.
"'After all' isn't the end of a thought, is it?"
"Sometimes it is of a girl's thought; I suppose men are neater about their thoughts, and always finish 'em. It isn't the end of the thought I had then, though."
"What is the end of it?"
She looked at him impulsively. "Oh, it's foolish," she said, and she laughed as laughs one who proposes something probably impossible. "But wouldn't it
