"Something to show me?" I looked at him wonderingly.
"Something I brought you from—from the city."
"But I told you not to bring me anything."
"I know. But I had already bought it then, and I couldn't take it back to the jeweler and tell him that my lady had turned it down, could I?"
He drew a little case from his pocket, a long, slender one this time, and as I found my eyes fixed with an eager fascination upon his hands as they worked for a moment with the catch, I seemed to see stretching before me a long vista of years, each one punctuated with quarrels like the one we had just endured, and the rough places left by these ruptures filled in and smoothed over by myriads of these small, dainty jewel-boxes. But Richard's deft fingers had opened the case, and he passed it over to me. I gave a little gasp of astonished delight as I saw lying upon its bed of velvet a string of pearls—white, softly-glistening, beautiful things.
"Let's see how they look on you," he suggested, unfastening the dull gold clasp and slipping the lovely chain around my neck. He fastened them securely, then smiled approval as he leaned back and viewed the effect.
"I've wanted you to have something like this ever since I've known you," he said with the air of a connoisseur as he still held back and looked at the pearls lying close around the neck of my collarless blouse. "So when I happened to see these the other day in—the city, I decided that they were exactly what I wanted for my little girl."
I was opening and shutting the box as he talked, and when he mentioned seeing them in the city I idly glanced at the name on the lining, and saw that the case bore the name of a well-known firm in St. Louis.
"Why, Richard," I cried, "did you go all the way to St. Louis to find them?"
I laughed, but there were two tiny lines between his eyes.