"You're right," he replied, "and you need never be, Nora. You can always trust me."
I said mischievously:
"It's the other way. I think you're afraid of me."
He frowned me down at that, and demanded to know what I meant, but I couldn't explain.
He lighted the logs in the fireplace, and pulled up the big Morris chair and a footstool before it. He made me sit on the stool at his knee. Then we talked till it was pretty late, and mama popped her head in and said I ought to go to bed. I protested that as I didn't have to go to work next day, I need not get up early. Roger said she was right, and that he must be going.
I had thought he was going to spend Christmas with me, and I was so dreadfully disappointed that I nearly cried, and he tried to cheer me up. He said he wouldn't go if he could help it, but that his people expected him home at least at Christmas. That was the first time he had ever referred to his "people," and I felt a vague sense of jealousy that they meant more to him than I did. But I did not tell him that, for he suddenly leaned over me and said:
"I'd rather be here with you, Nora, than anywhere else in the world."
I sat up at that, and said triumphantly:
"Then you must care for me if that's so."