"Miss Cassillis most generously volunteered her[45] invaluable aid, and spared no effort to discover any possible foe that might prove to be parasitic upon these larvæ. But so far without success."
"Thank you," she said, in a very low voice. And after a short silence: "It was not mere vanity, Mr. Jones. Do you understand?"
"I know it was not vanity, even if I do not entirely understand."
"Shall I tell you?"
"Please."
"It was the first thing that I have ever been permitted to do all by myself. It meant so much to me.... And I wished to have a little record of it—even if you think it is of no scientific importance."
"It is of more importance than——" But he managed to stop himself, slightly startled. She had lifted her head from the pages of the field book to look at him. When his voice failed, and while the red burned brilliantly in his ears, she resumed her perusal of his journal, gravely. After a while, though she turned the pages as if she were really reading, he concluded that her mind was elsewhere. It was.
Presently he rose, mended the fire, filled the kettle, and unhooked the brace of wild ducks from[46] the eaves where they swung, and marched off with them toward the water.
When he returned, the ducks were plucked and split for broiling. He found her seated as he had left her, dreaming awake, idle hands folded on the pages of his open field book.
For dinner they had broiled mallard, coffee, ash-cakes, and bon-bons. After it she smoked a cigarette with him.