"Yes, just finished knitting them, from yarn mother sent. Feel them. Aren't they soft?"
"I envy them very much," I said, and was much pleased with my subtlety.
"Envy them—why? . . . Oh, you mean because they're—they're always holding my hands," and a happy wave of color flushed into her cheeks. "You are very clever."
"Thanks, Jean. Now take off that pretty little cap of yours, which is not half as beautiful as the hair it hides, and let me draw off your overshoes—I have a grievance against them, as well—and we'll just sit down and settle the affairs of the universe."
"I wish we could," she said, with a note that had lost most of its joyousness; "I rather wish we could. But where have you been hiding? And why? And did that afternoon we spent coasting bore you so that you have never asked me out since?"
"Oh, I've been busy," I said. "Very busy."
"Busy? At what?"
Then I could forbear no longer. My secret was about to burst from me. I took Jean's coat and cap; I seated her; I drew off her overshoes; I stirred the fire.
"Busy? Yes, I'm very busy. I have a big world to think about. In the words of the poet:
"I love not man the less, but Nature more, From these our interviews, in which I steal From all I may be, or have been before, To mingle with the Universe, and feel What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal."