“It’s because you have faults, as a boy,” Adam told her, honestly. “You know, my lad, you could be a bit sturdier and none the worse. And yet, I like you immensely as you are. Perhaps if you were changed, you would lose some charm and spoil it all. I shall have to let you be, and content myself with you as you are.”
“Oh, thank you,” said Garde, already smiling at him again, to herself. “Then please make no more remarks about me.”
“About your legs? Well, I won’t, since you appear so sensitive about them. Mind you, they will do well enough, after all.”
“Shall we go on?” Garde asked him. She was a little weary and would have been glad of further rest, but she found she was much more comfortable when they were walking side by side.
Adam was up at once, for walk they never so fast, he felt he could by no means come up with his thoughts and desires, which had run so far ahead of them always.
“Never mind what I say,” said he, as they resumed the onward march. “I have to have my say out, when I think it. And you know you do puzzle me constantly.”
“I don’t see why, or how,” said Garde.
“It’s because I seem to think I have seen you somewhere before. And yet I know that is impossible, hence I am driven to think of your girlishness, for an explanation.”
Garde said: “I think this is very much in your imagination, Adam Rust.”
“Not a bit of it,” corrected her comrade. “You were patterned for a girl, my boy, depend upon it. There was some mistake, or some bit of trickery, when you became one of us. Why, a man couldn’t even think a little oath, in your presence.”