"Good morning, sir."
"I wonder if you have got such a thing as a really good piece of india-rubber."
Mona took some in from the window, but it was hard and brittle.
"That is of no use," she said, "but I have some more upstairs."
A few months before, in Tottenham Court Road, she had, as Lucy expressed it, "struck a rich vein of india-rubber," pliable, elastic, and neatly bevelled into dainty pieces. Mona had been busy with some fine histological drawings at the time, and had laid in a small stock, a sample of which she now produced.
"I think you will find that quite satisfactory," she said, quietly putting pencil and paper before him.
He tried it.
"Why, I never had such a piece of india-rubber in my life before," he said, looking up in surprise, and their eyes met with one of those rare sympathetic smiles which are sometimes called forth by a common appreciation of even the most trivial things.
"I am taking advantage of a holiday to make some diagrams," he went on, "and, when one is in a hurry, bread is a very poor makeshift for india-rubber."
Diagrams! The word sounded like an old friend. Mona quite longed to know what they were—botanical? anatomical? physiological? She merely assented in a word, however, and with another courteous "Good morning" he went away.