"You ought to be out of doors. Why, may I ask, did you take up nursing?"
She shrugged her shoulders and flashed a frank smile at him.
"I had to do something—there were such crowds of us at home. And I haven't any talents."
"It strikes me as remarkably plucky."
"Why?" she demanded promptly. "Thousands of girls are doing the same thing every day."
"I suppose they are, but that's quite another thing.
"I fail to see it," she retorted with an ironical sparkle in her eye.
"You wouldn't, of course, and I can't altogether explain. But perhaps when I've had time to think it over…"
Again they laughed. It was the sort of stupid little conversation to which enormous point is given solely by mutual attraction. However slight and evanescent that affinity may be, it yet hints at the possibility of other things, surrounding the most trivial remarks with a kind of roseate glow.
In this instance the glow lasted during what might have been an awkward interval, while the two stood looking at each other with nothing to say. Esther was the first to return to a matter-of-fact world.