"Well, well," said her father, "perhaps we shall; but in the meantime I must go to my sermon."
In the drawing-room Elizabeth settled herself in an arm-chair with some needlework, and pointed out the cigarettes and matches to her guest.
"Don't you smoke?" he asked.
"No. Father would hate it: he doesn't ever smoke himself."
"I see. I say, you have got a lot of jolly prints. May I look at them?"
He proved very knowledgeable about the prints, and from prints they passed to books, and Elizabeth found him so full of honest enthusiasm, and with so nice a taste in book-people, that the last shreds of distrust and reserve vanished, and she cried in her Elizabethan way: "And actually I wondered what in the world I would talk to you about!"
Arthur Townshend laughed.
"Tell me," he said, "what subjects you had thought of?"
"Well," said she, sitting up very straight and counting on her fingers, "first I thought I would start you on Persia and keep you there as long as possible; then intelligent questions about politics, something really long-drawn-out, like Home Rule or Women's Suffrage; then—then—I had thought of Ellen Wheeler Wilcox!"
Arthur Townshend groaned.