"Elizabeth! This is a very great pleasure. I thought you had forgotten me!"
"You deserve to be forgotten, my dear friend. Ah, now you've disarmed me, though. I've just conscience enough to have to tell you that I've come this time with ulterior motives."
"I can find fault with no motives of yours, so long as they prompt you to visit me. I look forward to my little chats with you as a child looks forward to his Saturday treats."
"My dear Tom, your gift of saying delightful things is one of the wonders of the age. Here you never see a woman from one year's end to the other, and yet you can turn a compliment as charmingly as though you practised on the fairest in the land every evening of your life."
"'In my youth, said the Father——'" quoted the old gentleman with a twinkle. "However, let's hear your ulterior motives first, my dear Elizabeth, so that afterwards we can chat with unburdened minds."
"No—no, I refuse to beard you until we have some tea. Thank goodness, here's William bringing it now. I took the liberty of ordering it, Tom."
"You took no liberties at all—you merely assumed your privileges. Tut-tut! Tea. You women, with all your notions and your injurious habits—how very delightful it is to be near you!"
"To hear you talk, Tom, how could anyone suspect that you were a man of principles!" cried Miss Bancroft. "How could anyone dream that you were hard, and austere and—and unimaginative!" He looked at her in mild astonishment.
He was a small old man, rather delicate in build, with the blunt broad hands of a worker, and a high, smooth, massive forehead, from which his perfectly white hair fell back, long and almost childishly soft and fine. His eyes, set deep under the sharply defined bone of his projecting brow, wore the gentle, far-away expression noticeable in many near-sighted people; but his chin contradicted their softness, and there was a hint of obstinacy in his close-set mouth and rather long upper lip. He was dressed negligently, and indeed almost shabbily, and he made no apologies for his appearance; since he never gave a thought to it himself, he could not consider what other people might think of it. His greatest hobby, lingering with him from earlier years, was chemistry, and he spent virtually all his time in the laboratory which he had fitted up in one of the odd towers that decorated his house. His coat and trousers would have given a far less observant person than Sherlock Holmes a clue to this favorite occupation of his, stained and burned as they were with acids.
"Do you eat your dinner in those clothes?" demanded Miss Bancroft.