"I am wondering myself," she confessed.
"I hope you will," he said bluntly.
"It is very kind of you to say so," she said smiling at him a little shyly.
"I mean it. The fact is, Miss Farmond, you are a bit of a treat."
The quaintness of the phrase was irresistible and she laughed outright.
"Am I?"
"It's a fact," said he, "you see I live an odd lonely kind of life here, and for most of my career I've lived an odd lonely kind of life too, so far as girls were concerned. It may sound rum to you to hear a backwood hunks of my time of life confessing to finding a girl of your age a bit of a treat, but it's a fact."
"Yes," she said. "I should have thought I must seem rather young and foolish."
"Lord, I don't mean that!" he exclaimed. "I mean that I must seem a pretty uninteresting bit of elderly shoe-leather."