"I don't see how you could well be nicer."
"Oh! you don't know what I could do if I tried. You underrate my powers; you always did. But you are a very restful person, Chris; when my mind gets tired with worrying over things and trying to understand them, I find it a perfect holiday to talk to you. You seem to take things as they are."
"Well, I have to, you see; and what must be must."
"Simple natures like yours are very soothing to complex natures like mine. When I've lived my life and worn myself out with trying to get the utmost I can out of everything, I shall spend the first three thousand years of eternity sitting quite still upon a fixed star without speaking, with my legs dangling into space, and looking at you. It will be such a nice rest, before beginning life over again."
"Say two thousand years; you'd never be able to sit still without speaking for more than two thousand years at the outside. By that time you'd have pulled yourself together, and be wanting to set about teaching the angels a thing or two. I know your ways."
"I should enjoy that," laughed Elisabeth.
"So would the angels, if they were anything like me."
Elisabeth laughed again, and looked through the trees to the fields beyond. Friends were much more comfortable than lovers, she said to herself; Alan in his palmiest days had never been half so soothing to her as Christopher was now. She wondered why poets and people of that kind made so much of love and so little of friendship, since the latter was obviously the more lasting and satisfactory of the two. Somehow the mere presence of Christopher had quite cured the sore feeling that Alan and Felicia had left behind them when they started for their walk without even asking her to go with them; and she was once more sure of the fact that she was necessary to somebody—a certainty without which Elisabeth could not live. So her imagination took heart of grace again, and began drawing plans for extensive castles in Spain, and arranging social campaigns wherein she herself should be crowned with triumph. She decided that half the delight of winning life's prizes and meeting its fairy princes would be the telling Christopher all about them afterward; for her belief in his exhaustless sympathy was boundless.
"A penny for your thoughts," he said, after she had been silent for some moments.
"I was looking at Mrs. Bateson feeding her fowls," said Elisabeth evasively; "and, I say, have you ever noticed that hens are just like tea-pots, and cocks like coffee-pots? Look at them now! It seems as if an army of breakfast services had suddenly come to life à la Galatea, and were pouring libations at Mrs. Bateson's feet."