"You can't," she said.
"I can. Easily. I miscalculated the time it would take."
She said nothing, for she knew that he had lied. His miscalculation was all the other way. She bent again over her work. It was all that he could do not to lift her arms gently but firmly from the table, to take away her pen and ink, and put out her lamp. He would have liked to have done some violence to the catalogue.
"I say, you know, you'll make yourself ill. You're burning the candle at both ends. May I suggest that the game isn't worth the candle?"
"Have you very much more to do?"
"About two hours' work. Would it be impertinent to say that I could do it better by myself?"
She looked at her watch and ignored his last question. "You can't do two hours' work. It's twenty minutes past your time already."
Past his time, indeed! As if he hadn't been working past his time every night since he came. She had grown mighty particular all of a sudden!
"The presence of these engaging little Elzevirs is a terrible temptation to a second-hand bookseller, still I believe you can trust me with them alone."
From the expression of her face he gathered that this remark was even more impertinent than the other. He had meant it to be.