“And am I such a lady?”
Stasch thought a moment and then answered:
“No; you are too young for that. Those ladies were grown up——”
And the idea never struck him that perhaps never had wandering knight ever served lady so faithfully as he had his little sister. He took everything that he had done for her as a matter of course.
But Nell felt hurt by his words, and screwing up her mouth into a pout, she said:
“You once told me in the desert that I acted like a big girl of thirteen. Ah!”
“Only once; but you are merely eight years old.”
“But in ten years I shall be eighteen.”
“Oh, that is a great while off, and then I shall be twenty-four, but at that age a man does not think about any lady, for he has something quite different to think of then; that is very evident.”
“And what are you
