“Happy enough now,” he answered. “I was thinking of the future.”
“Oh, the future!”—she made a sweeping gesture of scorn—“the future’s so far away no one knows anything about it. It’s all secrets. Let’s not bother with it. The present’s enough.”
Her hand, as she held it up in front of her, suddenly caught her eye and fixed her attention.
“Look at my hands,” she said. “They’re getting quite white and ladylike. They’re losing their look of honest toil, aren’t they? How I’ve hated it!”
He held out his big palm and she placed her left hand, which was nearest him, in it. Her hands were small, the skin beautifully fine and delicate, but they showed the hard labor of the past in a blunting and broadening of the finger-tips. The Colonel looked at the little one lying in his.
“I don’t see that there’s anything the matter with them,” he said. “This one only wants one more thing.”
“What’s that?”
“A ring.”
This time June was caught.
“A ring?” she said. “Well, I have several, but they’re not very pretty, and I thought I’d wait till father gave me a really handsome one.”