"It's cold!"
"You can have a fire."
"Yes, but 't would be cold anyhow; the air would feel as if it had been on storage."
"Daughter!"
"And it would look so proper and prim, there would be no papers lying around, and I—I should have to talk so hard," she wound up by tucking her bare arm under the professor's; and he, looking on her winsome face and soft white neck and shoulders, forgot there was a question and only smiled at her.
"You, know, father, you needn't talk; you can read—"
"Read!"
"Well," she confided, cuddling close to him, "they do talk such nonsense, you know, if you've got them off to yourself. I can't stand it—you needn't laugh!" She rubbed her cheek along the worn broadcloth of his coat—the professor gave little heed to his clothes— "You wouldn't like it either."
The professor's laugh rang through the house, but there was a heartache under the laughter; his little comrade daughter was a woman grown, and these questions of womanhood, slight as they were, puzzled him. And so it was the guest was ushered into the room on the left, instead of the one on the right, which was properly given over to the gods of company.