“Thank you,” said the girl, “but I’m afraid there is nothing to be done.”
“Nothing to be done!” He dropped on his knees before the black monster of a stove, “Do you suppose I’m here to do nothing?”
“You are here, I think, for shelter from the storm.”
It had not occurred to him before that she looked upon him as a chance wanderer.
“That shows your ignorance of the situation. I am here to rescue you. I left my fireside for no other reason. As I came along I said at every blast, ‘that poor, poor girl.’ I set out to bring you to safety. I begin to think I was born for no other reason.”
She smiled rather wearily, “Your coming at all is so strange that I could almost believe you.”
“You may thoroughly believe me, more easily perhaps when I tell you I did not particularly want to come. I started out at dawn very cross and cold because I did not know what I was going to find....”
“But I thought you said you did know that you were going to rescue a girl?”
“A girl, yes. But what’s a mere girl? How many thousand girls have I seen in my life? Is that a thought to turn a man’s head? What I did not know was that I was going to find you.”
“The fire will never burn with the chimney strewn on the floor,” she said mildly.