People might call that a flirtatious remark, but I plead not guilty; I wouldn't know how to flirt, even if I wanted to do so." She turned her head and looked at me in a way that I could not misunderstand; it was plain, unvarnished scorn, and a ladylike anger, and a few other unpleasant things.
It made me think of a certain star in "The Taming of the Shrew." "Fie, fie! unknit that threatening, unkind brow, And dart not scornful glances from those eyes, To wound thy neighbor and thine enemy," I declaimed, with rather a free adaptation to my own need.
Her brow positively refused to unknit.

"Have you nothing to do but spout bad quotations from Shakespeare on a hilltop ?" she wanted to know, in a particularly disagreeable tone.
"Plenty; I have yet to win that narrow pass," I said.
"Hardly to-day," she told me, with more than a shade of triumph.

"Father is at home, and he heard of your trip yesterday." If she expected to scare me by that! "Must our feud include your father?
When I met him a month ago, he gave me a cordial invitation to stop, if I ever happened this way." She lifted those heavy lashes, and her eyes plainly spoke unbelief.
"It's a fact," I assured her calmly.

"I met him one day in Laurel, and was fortunate enough to perform a service which earned his gratitude.

As I say, he invited me to come and see him; I told him I should be glad to have him visit me at the Bay State Ranch, and we embraced each other with much fervor." "Indeed!" I could see that she persisted in doubting my veracity.
"Ask your father if we didn't," I said, much injured.