"Is it anything to be ashamed of—doing up a shirt?" she demanded.
"Not doing it up like that! That's a work of art!"
"A work of heart—I did it for Stefana. I've got quite fond of it now, and shall hate to part with it. It's a friend."
"A bosom friend," he parried. Again they laughed and grew more acquainted. Miss Theodosia made tea in her dainty Sèvres cups. The faintest flecks of pink made her face youthful. Miss Theodosia was a good-looking woman always, but, animated, her face was really lovely. John Bradford was better used to paper women, like paper babies, but his taste recognized flesh-and-blood attractiveness. He had always been a lonely man—until now.
"I'm having a beautiful time," he sighed. "Is it anything to be ashamed of, to have a beautiful time?"
"Or two cups of tea? Please! This is my company tea—warranted good to write stories on!"
"Oh—stories. Are there such things? Did I ever write one? Have I got to write another?"
"It's the twenty-eighth," Miss Theodosia reminded demurely. "But you will need another cup of tea. How long does it take?"
"To drink another cup?"
"To write another story. Tell me about it. Perhaps I could do it. You
take a blotter and a pen and plenty of half-sheets of paper—'tracts,'
Evangeline calls them! Then you write 'Good Lord!' That is what
Evangeline says you wrote on a tract! She said maybe it was a sermon."