“Oh!” I said, rather taken aback.
“And on your reticence,” he added.
I said “Oh!” again.
“Not so did Hastings write,” continued my friend. “On every page, many, many times was the word ‘I.’ What he thought—what he did. But you—you have kept your personality in the background; only once or twice does it obtrude—in scenes of home life, shall we say?”
I blushed a little before the twinkle in his eye.
“What do you really think of the stuff?” I asked nervously.
“You want my candid opinion?”
“Yes.”
Poirot laid his jesting manner aside.
“A very meticulous and accurate account,” he said kindly. “You have recorded all the facts faithfully and exactly—though you have shown yourself becomingly reticent as to your own share in them.”