"Yes."
She knew he was thinking of their last conversation, and she felt a momentary surprise that he had remembered it.
"We never finished that conversation," he said, after a pause.
"No; but then conversations never are finished, are they? They always seem to break off just when they are coming to the beginning. A bell rings, or there is an interruption, or one is told it is bedtime."
"Or fools rush in with their word where you and I should fear to tread, and spoil everything."
"Yes."
"And have you been holding the wool and tying up the flowers, as you so graphically described, ever since you left Atherstone in July?"
"I hope I have; I have tried."
"I am sure of that," he said, with sudden earnestness, then added more slowly, "I have not wound any wool; I have only enjoyed myself."
"Perhaps," said Ruth, turning her clear, frank gaze upon him, "that may have been the harder work of the two; it sometimes is."