“The figure couldn’t be better,” said Matt.
The girl shook her head in laughing reproof.
“I guess I’d better measure you and prove it, then,” said Matt, rising.
“My, how that lamp flares!” cried Miss Coble, rushing towards the table, and carefully fumbling with the regulator. Matt resumed his seat, feeling rather foolish; but soon, when the girl turned the talk on himself, the reserved, solitary young man found himself telling her of adventures by sea and land, which he had not told anybody, perhaps because nobody had ever asked him. He gave Halifax prison a wide berth, warding off her casual questions about his position and prospects by general statements about his artistic aspirations. Concerning aspects of London life Miss Coble’s curiosity was at its keenest, her own experience of existence having been limited, she said, to Halifax and its environs, with faint, childish reminiscences of Greencastle, Pennsylvania, where her mother had died thirteen years before, when she was six years old.
“Oh, but I didn’t mean to tell you my age,” she said, pouting. “In ten years’ time you will know I am nearly thirty.”
Matt was about to reassure her by declaring that in ten years’ time he would have forgotten all about her, when the fall of the sleeper’s pipe checked the unchivalrous statement.
He rose to go as soon as the mountain awoke, for he had a goodish tramp before him.
Miss Coble accompanied him to the outer door. His eye was caught by the beauty of the moon, gleaming irregularly from a lurid rack of clouds. He stood in charmed silence gazing upward.
“What are you staring at? Aren’t you going to say good-night?” asked Miss Coble, rather tartly.
His spirit returned to earth.