"It's too bad he's so homely, isn't it? It's rather hard to take him very seriously."
"Yes." She sighed, then caught herself up loyally. "No! Because when you get to know him you don't think about his face at all."
David was thinking he had not done full justice to her face. It was spirited and really intelligent, he decided, though its prettiness was as yet open to question. He perceived what hitherto he had missed: that she had hair and eyes quite worthy of consideration. Black as night the former was, and fine and rebellious, with little curling wisps about her ears and neck. The eyes were a peculiar slaty gray and had depths inviting inspection. He found himself wishing he could see them really alight.
"It would be something," he said thoughtfully, going back to Jonathan, "to be able to run that sort of hospital. But what a crew of lame ducks we are! Except you, of course!"
She laughed. "Oh, you needn't be polite. I'm one, too. Not a very big one or very tragic. A lame duckling, shall we say?"
He suggested that a lame duckling might grow up into a wonderful swan, and munched his apple ruminatively. Neither happened to think of a certain incident, much discussed, in which that edible figured prominently. And he did not ask a question.
"But how does he get his work done, with such a crew?"
"We're not all lame ducks, you know. And—you work hard, don't you?"
"Of course. It would be only decent—"
"We all think that. Even the big strong ducks like to work for him."