"Why?" quickly.

"To miss the best."

"Is work the best?"

She said "Yes," adding after a little: "I don't just mean making sandwiches. That's just a beginning. There's everything ahead."

She said it as if the world were hers. O-liver, in spite of himself, was thrilled. "How do you know that everything is ahead?"

"I shall make it come"—securely.

They sat in silence for a while; then O-liver said: "I have brought you a book."

It was an old copy of Punch.

"I shall like it," she said. "Sometimes the evenings are dull when my work is over."

"Dullness comes for me when work begins."