human
I like him very much, she said, with decision.
gpt
He's honest and nice. I believe I like him better than any man I know.
human
So do I, said Emily Carmichael unexpectedly.
gpt
But that doesn't keep him from being funny!--Do you know, Joan, often as we have him to dinner, and promptly as he pays his party-calls (who taught him that, I wonder?) he has never once set foot in this house just casually, of his own accord! I believe he thinks it wouldn't be 'respectful' of him. And yet I don't seem to awe him particularly, and it certainly isn't Mother's lorgnon--he positively teases her, and she likes it! The big house and that sort of thing wouldn't impress him--he's not enough of a snob. And yet he will not come to see me. Queer, isn't it?
human
more than one girl at a time. While he could hardly be said to be
gpt
So you've been having him to dinner? she murmured.
human
He never told me that!
gpt
Oh, no, he wouldn't. Haven't you noticed that for all his artlessness, he never really does tell much about himself? Or about anything else! That's one reason he's so popular with Johnny and all of them, I think. He's a sort of confidential agent to the crowd. I know that when Father can't find Johnny sometimes (she blushed, and Joan nodded sympathetically)
human
How did your brother happen to know him?
gpt
Oh, boys always know each other--they're so much more democratic than girls. Horrid little snips we used to be, remember?--turning up our noses at any other children who didn't go to dancing school?
human
I did not go to dancing school myself, remarked Joan quietly.
gpt
My mother taught me.
human
Then your mother must have been Queen of the Fairies! said her friend, rather prettily.
gpt
Johnny and Archie first met, I believe, upon the field of battle. There used to be a continuous warfare on in this neighborhood between what were known as the Alley Gang and the Av'noo Kids. We expected Johnny to be brought in any day a mangled corpse--he being the leader of the Av'noo Kids. One day the Alley Gang caught him and his cohorts rather depleted as to numbers, and were naturally engaged in wiping them off the face of the earth, when the paper-boy came up on his wheel. With a whoop he dropped wheel and papers and joined in the fray. The Alley Gang were getting the worst of it when policemen arrived--it seems some windows had been smashed. The other boys scattered, but the rescuer dared not desert his papers and so got caught; and Johnny came panting home to get Father to bail him out of jail. That's the first we heard of Archie Blair.
human
Odd that he didn't side with the Alley Gang, wasn't it?
gpt
Why, don't you see?--the Av'noo Kids were getting the worst of it. That's Archie!...