“Which I am.”
“Write or act or do something—”
“Yes, and that's true, too.”
“But you don't, you know. You don't do anything. You've been talking that way ever since I knew you, calling this a one-horse town and saying how you hated it, and that you weren't going to waste your life here, and all that, but you keep staying here and doing just the same things. The last long talk we had together you told me you knew you could write poems and plays and all sorts of things, you just felt that you could. You were going to begin right away. You said that some months ago, and you haven't done any writing at all. Now, have you?”
“No-o. No, but that doesn't mean I shan't by and by.”
“But you didn't begin as you said you would. That was last spring, more than a year ago, and I don't believe you have tried to write a single poem. Have you?”
He was beginning to be ruffled. It was quite unusual for any one, most of all for a girl, to talk to him in this way.
“I don't know that I have,” he said loftily. “And, anyway, I don't see that it is—is—”
“My business whether you have or not. I know it isn't. I'm sorry I spoke. But, you see, I—Oh, well, never mind. And I do want you to know how much I appreciate your helping me as you did just now. I don't know how to thank you for that.”
But thanks were not exactly what he wanted at that moment.