Katie had not counted on that.
"Have you any reason," she asked, "to think Ann cares for you ?" He laughed happily.

"N--o; only I don't think it displeases her to have me say nice things to her." And again he laughed.
Then Ann had encouraged him.

A girl had no business to encourage a man to say nice things to her when she knew nothing could come of it.
But Katie's memory there nudged Katie's primness; memory of all the men who had been encouraged to say nice things to Katie Jones, even when it was not desirable--or perhaps even possible--that anything could "come of it." But of course that was different.

Ann was in no position to permit nice things being said to her.
"Katie," he was asking, "where did you first meet her?
How did you come to know her?
Can't you tell me all about it ?" There came a mad impulse to do so.

To say: "I first met her right down there at the edge of the water.