“Don’t think I’m not grateful,” she employed that chastened member to say. “I am, most deeply. So will father be, even if he decides not to leave. I’m afraid that’s what he will decide.”
“He mustn’t.”
“Tell him that yourself.”
“I will, if it becomes necessary.”
“Let me be present at the interview. Most people are afraid of dad. Perhaps you’d be, too.”
“I could always run away,” he remarked, unsmiling. “You know how well I do it.”
“I must do it now myself, and get arrayed for the daily tea sacrifice. Au revoir.”
“Hasta mañana,” he said absently.
She had turned to go, but at the word she came slowly back a pace or two, smiling.
“What a strange beetle man you are!” she said softly. “I have no other friends like you. You are a friend, aren’t you, in your queer way?” She did not wait for an answer, but went on: “You don’t come to see me when I ask you. You don’t send me any word. You make me feel that, compared to your concerns with beetles and flies, I’m quite hopelessly unimportant. And yet here I find you giving up your own pursuits and wasting your time to plan and watch and think for us.”