"Well, I've done my best," she thought impatiently.

"If he doesn't want to be friends he needn't be." Then, with a change of manner, she observed flippantly: "Sometimes one's relatives are useful and sometimes they're not." Really, he was impossibly heavy except in a crisis; and one could scarcely be expected to produce crises in order to put him thoroughly at his ease.
As he made no response to her trite remark, she, also, fell silent, while they turned into Twenty-third Street, and began the long walk to Ninth Avenue.

Once or twice, glancing inquiringly into his face, which wore a preoccupied look, she wondered if he were thinking of Alice.
Then, as the silence became suddenly oppressive, she ventured warily in the effort to dispel it: "I hope you are not disturbed about anything ?" "Disturbed ?" He turned to her with a start.

"No, I was only wondering if you knew how much your friendship would mean to me." It was out at last, and confirmed once more in her knowledge of men, she retorted gaily: "How can I know if you won't take the trouble to tell me ?" After all, she reflected cheerfully, the education she had derived from George and Judge Crowborough, though lacking in the higher branches, was fundamentally sound.

All men were alike in one thing at least--they invariably disappointed one's expectations.
"I've been trying to tell you for a quarter of an hour," he answered, "and I didn't know how to put it." "But at last you didn't have to put it at all," she said laughingly; "it simply put itself, didn't it ?" "I am still wondering," he persisted gravely.
"Wondering if I know ?" She spoke in the sweetly practical tone of one who is firmly resolved not to permit any nonsense.