“I’ve caught rats before,” she confessed.
“Have you? Great! I always thought you must have had another vocation in life.”
“But I hate caterpillars, don’t you?” she declared naïvely.
“By all means,” he agreed. “They give one the fuzzy-wuzzies, don’t they?”
They both laughed. He drew his chair closer to the couch and watched her frankly. She watched him with equal candor. There was honest admiration in his next remark: “You’re strong, aren’t you, Erna?”
“Yes.”
“How’d you get that way?” he pursued.
“I must ’a’ been born that way. I guess my father an’ mother were strong an’ healthy. Any way, I exercise a great deal—”
“In the store, you mean?”
“No, at night, by the open window, in—”