“Oh! Not unfortunate for you?”
“Not exactly. Sometimes I feel it might perhaps have been better had you been a man—there are occasions—”
He paused.
“My pipe is not quite smoked out,” he said, pathetically. “Would you put your hand in my pocket—the one nearest to you—I don’t want to move my arm—and give it to me?”
She obeyed.
He sighed.
“I must move my arm after all!” he said, drearily. “What a bore! You don’t mind?”
“Mind? Certainly not!”
She stood apart from him while he went through the usual business of rekindling his tobacco.
“A pipe,” he murmured, “is such a convenient thing! It fills in awkward lapses of conversation—when—when one feels one can get no further.”