"You are a patient man!"
"Well! You haven't come two miles to tell me that?"
"But I have. Patience is a most unusual virtue—in a man, but there is such a thing as having too much of it. Do you remember the story of the fox and the wolf?"
"The nursery tale? Let me see. I think my grandmother used to tell it to me, but that was long ago. I forget the point."
"The wolf bit him—put out his eyes, and so on, the fox simply saying all the time, 'patience!' Till finally the enemy tore his heart out, and the fox found, too late, that patience is the most dangerous of all virtues."
Peter gazed at the narrator of this fable in amazement. For the first time in his life the idea that women are incomprehensible found lodgment in his mind.
"Ah, I see you think me daft," said his friend. And not for the first time in her life, by any means, she found a man dense.
"In so many plain words, then, are you not in love?"
The blood seemed on the point of bursting through Peter's skin; his head weighed a ton; his legs became pipe-stems. He gasped something inarticulately. Then, manly sense asserted itself. His look grew steady and grave and nobody could have found fault with his manner, as he said:
"You know I love your daughter. I reckon everybody knows that."