He gave a single shake of the head, and bunched up his lips.
"There are always more of them coming on," he said with melancholy.
She looked at the little animal as it wandered adventurously on the office table. "Then I'll take it home to-night; but, till then, would you mind keeping it in your pocket? I'm afraid it will get trodden on. And, oh, look, it has put its wretched little paw into the inkpot! If you dare to smudge my beautiful clean papers——" She held it gingerly by the body while Mr. Jessop dabbed its foot with blotting-paper.
"You'll be kind to him?" he asked wistfully.
"Of course I shall, and I'll call him Arnold, after you. Because," she added hastily, in dread of misunderstanding, "because it was so good of you to give him to me." She smiled vividly, with her unfailing wish to please.
For three years, while Grace danced, and laughed, and made people happy by the look of her, and fell in love and out of it again; while Edward Webb did his dull clerkly work until evening brought him to his poets, and Uncle George bought and sold his grains, and yearned towards his harmonium and the seamen, Theresa went daily to Mr. Partiloe's office. She had meant to spend her leisure in writing, and though she had not yet penned a word, she still saw her future haloed with fame; and when she was saddened by the thought of her blank pages, and the fact that she was not even mastering her technique, she found comfort in the belief that the experiences of her idleness were necessary to her stock-in-trade.
With the upper froth of her mind, she was learning to be social.
"Grace," she said one night, as they lay in bed, "I wish you'd furbish me up a little bit, and—and drag me about with you to places, if I shouldn't be a nuisance."
"Oh, Terry! Would you really come?" There was a break in Grace's voice, and her hand sought Theresa's. "Would you? I've always wanted to."