"What do you mean?"
"Just what I say," said Fleda, going on with her work.
"What in the name of all the cobblers in the land do you do it for?"
"Because I prefer it to having a hole in my shoe; which would give me the additional trouble of mending my stockings."
Charlton muttered an impatient sentence, of which Fleda only understood that "the devil" was in it, and then desired to know if whole shoes would not answer the purpose as well as either holes or patches?
"Quite--if I had them," said Fleda, giving him another glance which, with all its gravity and sweetness, carried also a little gentle reproach.
"But do you know," said he after standing still a minute looking at her, "that any cobbler in the country would do what you are doing much better for sixpence?"
"I am quite aware of that," said Fleda, stitching away.
"Your hands are not strong enough for that work!"
Fleda again smiled at him, in the very dint of giving a hard push to her needle; a smile that would have witched him into good humour if he had not been determinately in a cloud and proof against everything. It only admonished him that he could not safely remain in the region of sunbeams; and he walked up and down the room furiously again. The sudden ceasing of his footsteps presently made her look up.