"I am glad you have found an occupation," she said, as he once more sat in her parlor, "but I wish it were less menial. You have outgrown servitude since you went to the island. What has wrought the change? Was it the sea winds?"
"Maybe," answered Winn, "or constantly looking out upon a boundless ocean. That always dwarfs humanity to me. But I have some business to take up my mind. I was sadly discontented until this opening came."
"I wish you had kept that money in your own hands," she said confidentially, "and used it to buy an interest in a paper. When I read your description of the reception this morning, it seemed to me that was your forte."
"Thanks for your compliment," he answered, "and I only wish you edited the paper now. But if you did, my pencil-pushing wouldn't strike you that way."
"But it really did," she continued, "and the best of it was what you didn't say, knowing, as I do, how you regard such affairs. Hiding your own opinion so well was fine art."
"I wasn't expected to express my views," he asserted, "but to flatter you all judiciously; that's what makes a paper popular."
"And do you think I wanted to be flattered?" she asked.
"Certainly," he replied, "you are a woman."
Ethel laughed.
"Personally, you are wrong; in general, right. I receive so much of it, it wearies me, knowing as I do how insincere it all is, but most of my sex, I'll admit, feel otherwise. But tell me why you haven't called for three weeks?"