"But, you see, I don't know exactly just what kind of a list you mean," she protested.
"Oh, shucks!" laughed the man. "Here, give me the paper! Now—head it like this: 'I, Esther Davidson, spinster, æt. thirty years and a few minutes over, do hereby promise and attest that no matter how unwilling to die I may be when my time comes, I shall, at least, not feel that life has defrauded me if I have succeeded in achieving and possessing the following brief list of experiences and substances.' There!" he finished triumphantly. "Now do you see how easy and business-like it all is? Just the plainest possible rating of the things you'd like to have before you're willing to die."
Cautiously Esther Davidson took the paper from his hand and scanned it with slow-smiling eyes.
"The—things—I'd—like to have—before I'm—willing—to—die," she mused indolently. Then suddenly into her placid face blazed an astonishing flame of passion that vanished again as quickly as it came. "My God!" she said. "The things I've got to have before I'm willing to die!"
Stretching the little paper taut across her knees, she began to scribble hasty, impulsive words and phrases, crossing and recrossing, making and erasing, now frowning fiercely down on the unoffending page, now staring off narrow-eyed and smilingly speculative into the blue-green spruce tops.
It was almost ten minutes before she spoke again. Then: "How do you spell amethyst?" she asked meditatively.
The man gave a groan of palpable disgust. "Oh, I say," he reproached her. "You're not playing fair! This was to be a really bona fide statement you know."
Without looking up the young woman lifted her hand and gesticulated across the left side of her mannish, khaki-colored flannel shirt.
"Cross my heart!" she affirmed solemnly. "This is a perfectly 'honest-injun' list!"
Then she tore up everything she had written and began all over again, astonishingly slowly, astonishingly neatly, on a fresh sheet of paper.