Down by the river Annette and Bennett were at first very shy of each other. In silence she handed him the plates, and he dipped them in the water and handed them back to her and she dried them; then the forks, and when they came to the knives, Bennett thought:
“Why can’t I say something?”
And Annette thought:
“Why can’t I say something?”
She looked out along the shining river, slow-moving under its green banks; never a house, never a boat in sight, and Bennett was bending down entirely engrossed in his occupation. It was his air of complete absorption in everything he did and said (though he never did and never said anything remarkable) that interested her and made her want to know more of him.
At last, when they had finished, very timidly she asked him:
“Are you going to be a clergyman?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Oh! I’m sorry!” She remembered very vividly his earnestness in her father’s study.
“It costs too much money, you know. And my mother doesn’t believe in me. It wouldn’t be any good if she did, because there isn’t any money.”