“It is MOST kind of you,” she said with grateful emphasis, “but I mustn't sit down and detain you. I can explain in a few words—if I may.”
He positively still held her hand in the oddest, natural, boyish way, and before she knew what she was doing he had made her take the chair—quite MADE her.
“Well, just sit down and explain,” he said. “I wish to thunder you would detain me. Take all the time you like. I want to hear all about it—honest Injun.”
There was a cushion in the chair, and as he talked, he pulled it out and began to arrange it behind her, still in the most natural and matter-of-fact way—so natural and matter-of-fact, indeed, that its very natural matter-of-factedness took her breath away.
“Is that fixed all right?” he asked.
Being a little lady, she could only accept his extraordinary friendliness with grateful appreciation, though she could not help fluttering a little in her bewilderment.
“Oh, thank you, thank you, Mr. Temple Barholm,” she said.
He sat down on the square ottoman facing her, and leaned forward with an air of making a frank confession.
“Guess what I was thinking to myself two minutes before you came in? I was thinking, `Lord, I'm lonesome—just sick lonesome!' And then I opened my eyes and looked—and there was a relation! Hully gee! I call that luck!”
“Dear me!” she said, shyly delighted. “DO you, Mr. Temple Barholm—REALLY?”