"Don't be too sure. He didn't look at all disconcerted. He didn't seem to mind your seeing him."
"That's all the worse, isn't it?"
"Why, no," her friend said, genially. "It means he didn't consider that he was engaged in anything out of the way. You can't expect to understand everything boys do at his age; they do all sorts of queer things, and outgrow them. Your brother evidently has a taste for queer people, and very likely he's been at least half sincere when he's made you believe he had a literary motive behind it. We all go through———"
"Thanks, Mr. Russell," she interrupted. "Let's don't say any more."
He looked at her flushed face and enlarged eyes; and he liked her all the better for her indignation: this was how good sisters ought to feel, he thought, failing to understand that most of what she felt was not about Walter. He ventured only a word more. "Try not to mind it so much; it really doesn't amount to anything."
She shook her head, and they went on in silence; she did not look at him again until they stopped before her own house. Then she gave him only one
