“It must, indeed,” she said, “though I am not sure I quite understand what a grouch is.”
“When you've got a grouch against a fellow,” he explained impersonally, “you want to get at him. You want to make him feel like a mutt; and a mutt's the worst kind of a fool. You've got one against me.”
She looked before her between narrowed lids and faintly smiled—the most disagreeable smile she was capable of. And yet for some too extraordinary reason he went on. But she had seen men go on before this when all the odds were against them. Sometimes their madness took them this way.
“I knew there was a lot against me when I came here,” he persisted. “I should have been a fool if I hadn't. I knew when you came that I was up against a pretty hard proposition; but I thought perhaps if I got busy and SHOWED you—you've got to SHOW a person—”
“Showed me what?” she asked contemptuously.
“Showed you—well—me,” he tried to explain.
“You!”
“And that I wanted to be friends,” he added candidly.
Was the man mad? Did he realize nothing? Was he too thick of skin even to see?
“Friends! You and I?” The words ought to have scorched him, pachyderm though he was.