The Quality of Mercy

"You know, Miss Kate," he said one day, "you are positively the most
refreshing girl I have ever met. You don't know how much I love you."

Kate considered for a moment. There was a hint of patronage, it seemed
to her, in his compliment, that she did not care for.

"Oh, consider the debt cancelled, Mr. Sanderson. You have not found my
rustic simplicity any more refreshing than I have found your poster
waistcoats."

"Why do you persist is misunderstanding and hurting me?"

"I apologize to your waistcoats, Mr. Sanderson. I have long considered
them the substitute for your better nature."

"Better natures and that sort of thing have rather gone out of style,
haven't they?"

"They are always out of style with people who never had them."

"Is this quarreling, Kate, or making love?"

"Oh, let's make it quarreling, Mr. Sanderson. And now about that horse
you lent me. That's a vile bit you've got on him." And the
conversation turned to other things, as it always did when he tried to
be sentimental with Kate. Sometimes he thought it was not the girl,
but her resistance, that he admired so much.

Things in the Bartlett household were getting a bit uneasy. The Squire
chafed that his cherished project of Kate and Dave's marrying seemed no
nearer realization now than it had been two years ago.