"You have been so very silent." "I am afraid I was thinking," muttered Dick.

"And that's a very rude thing to do when it makes one seem to ignore the lady who is with him," he added, forcing a smile.

"I beg your pardon, Laura, ten times over." "Oh, I don't mind your being abstracted," she answered simply, "so long as I am not the cause of it." "You-----" Dick checked himself quickly.
He had been right on the point of admitting that she had been the cause of his abstraction, and such a statement as that would have called for an abundance of further explanation.
So he forced himself into a peal of laughter that sounded nearly natural.
"If I were to tell you what a ridiculous thing I was thinking about, Laura!" he chuckled.
Then his West Point training against all forms of deceit led him to wondering, at once, whether Mr.Cameron could truthfully be defined as "a ridiculous thing." "Tell me," smiled the girl patiently.
"Not I," defied Prescott gayly.

"Then you would find me more ridiculous than the thing about which I was thinking." "Oh!" she replied, and the cadet fancied that his companion spoke in a tone of more or less hurt.
But, at least, Dick could look straight into her face now, as they talked, and every instant he realized more and more keenly how lovely Miss Bentley was growing to be.
They were driving down sweet-scented country lanes now.

The whole scene fitted romance.