But Kate came in,—Kate in one of her fresh-looking pin-spot print frocks. She seemed to exhale something clean, wholesome, stimulating, though she spoke no word and only laid the morning letters down beside him and, when he looked round at her, gave him her cheery smile.
He clutched at her plump, print-covered arm.
“For the love of heaven, K,” he said, “pick all that paper up off the floor and take it away.”
Kate gave him the soothing hand-stroke that nurses keep for feverish patients.
“Of course,” she said, “certainly, straight away, old boy.” She groped about beneath his knees for the wastepaper basket that would be needed as vehicle.
Then he heard her breathing a little hard as she stooped here, there and everywhere for the snowballs.
He did not turn round, but talked during her labours.
“It’s not etiquette I know, girl,” he said, “I wouldn’t dare to present a hero to the public who let a woman pick up her own [p184] handkerchief. But I always was a cowardly chap, wasn’t I? You remember the time I took Jack’s licking at school because I knew if I turned round and let him see it was the wrong fellow, the master would notice my cheek was puffed out with toothache and send me straight off to the dentist’s.”
“Yes, I remember,” said Kate, puffing and panting cheerfully about the room.
“Hurry up, old girl,” he said. “In a second I shan’t be able to restrain myself from clutching some of that stuff back.”