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"And now," continued Miss Colton, after an interval during which, I presume, she had been waiting for some reply to her frank declaration concerning mind and appetite, "what must I do to help? Shall I unpack the basket?"
I was struggling, as we say in Denboro, to get the ship under control. I had been taken aback so suddenly that I had lost steerage way. My slight experience with the vagaries of the feminine mind had not prepared me for the lightning changes of this kind. Not two minutes before she had, if one might judge by her look and tone, been deeply offended, almost insulted, because I refused to permit her wandering off alone into the woods. My invitation to lunch had been given on the spur of the moment and with no idea that it would be accepted. And she not only accepted, but had expected me to invite her, had been fearful that I might not do so. She told me so, herself.