"Haven't?" he questioned, dumping the wood into the box, and then stooping to rearrange it. "Would you object to telling me what you consider me, then?"
It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him that he was supposed to be a literary light, but she restrained the too-familiar speech.
"You are, of course, a boarder—a 'paying guest,' as we should say, if we were some people," she observed with gravity. "You are expected to complain of whatever service you receive, not to offer any under any circumstances."
"I see. Were you intending to fill this box?"
He stood upright, and his glance wandered from the box in question around the pleasant room in its fresh and expectant order. But it came discreetly back to Georgiana's face.
"Not at all," she denied. "There's quite enough there for to-night."
He nodded, and went toward the door. "The woodshed is, I suppose, beyond the kitchen, after the fashion of woodsheds, and the kitchen is beyond the dining-room?"
"Please don't bother!"
Of course it was useless to protest—and she followed him down the stairs, through dining-room and kitchen to the woodshed. As he passed through the kitchen he stopped and stood still in the middle of it.
"May I look for a minute?" he asked. "It takes me back to my boyhood. My mother used just such a kitchen as this. I thought it the best room in the house."