"If they were brown they must be brown now," she observed, looking out of the window.
"That's true! Isn't it curious I never thought of that? What are you writing?"
"Brown," she said, so briefly that it sounded something like a snub.
"Mouth?" inquired the girl, turning a new leaf on her pad.
"Perfect. Write it: there is no other term fit to describe its color, shape, its sensitive beauty, its—What did you write just then?"
"I wrote, 'Mouth, ordinary.'"
"I don't want you to! I want—"
"Really, Mr. Gatewood, a rhapsody on a girl's mouth is proper in poetry, but scarcely germane to the record of a purely business transaction. Please answer the next question tersely, if you don't mind: 'Figure?'"
"Oh, I do mind! I can't! Any poem is much too brief to describe her figure—"
"Shall we say 'Perfect'?" asked the girl, raising her brown eyes in a glimmering transition from vexation to amusement. For, after all, it could be only a coincidence that this young man should be describing features peculiar to herself.