"Well," began Roberta, plaiting Mary's hair so energetically that it pulled dreadfully. "He went over the same performance again, begging me for that little curl in token that I'd be his'n forevermore, etc. And after he'd spun it out into a most romantic proposal I said very sweetly, 'Really, Mr. Wade, to be honest with you, I can't afford to give away a seventy-five cent curl to every man who asks for one. You see I'm always financially embarrassed, for papa won't let me borrow after I've spent my monthly allowance, and I never by any chance have a cent left over after the second of the month. But if you must have a curl I'll give you Madame Main's address on Houston Street, where you can get an exact duplicate. I'm sure it will be just as good to wear over your heart as mine would.'" "Roberta, you little beast!" laughed Gay. "How could you give him the impression they were false, when you know very well they grow tight on your own scalp?" "I wanted to see if he would say 'with all thy faults I love thee still.' But he didn't. He got very stiff and red and walked away, and spent the rest of the evening flirting with Louie Rowan to show that he didn't care." Gay continuing to shake her head in a shocked and disapproving way, Roberta cried out, "I don't care! It's no worse than what you said to a certain freshman who proposed to you." "I don't call that a proposal," calmly disagreed Gay. "He didn't ask anything. He simply took it for granted that I'd fall all over myself to accept him. Mary, what would you say to a boy, one whom you'd always known but who'd never been particularly nice to you, who would march up to you some day and say: 'You suit me better than any girl I know, and I'd like to talk over arrangements with you now. Of course we couldn't marry till a year after my graduation, but I want to have it settled before I go away, so that I'll know what to depend on. My family all tell me that it's risky business, choosing a wife with red hair, but I'm willing to take the chances.'" "Now, Gay, you know it wasn't as bald as that," protested Roberta. "He put in all sorts of 'long and short sweetenin'.'" "It amounted to the same thing," persisted Gay, and in answer to Mary's gasping question, "What _did_ you say?" she replied: "I couldn't speak at first, I was so furious at his speech about red hair. But I managed to tell him several things before I finished, and nothing can be frostier and snippier than a sixteen year old girl when she tries to appear very dignified. That was my age then. The thing that made him maddest however, was that I told him that even the 'frog who would a-wooing go' knew how to go about such a matter in a much better way than he did. That he'd better wait till he was older, and amounted to something more than a mere silly boy. My snubbing almost gave him apoplexy, but it did him good in the long run."