And then I saw that my second drive had broken through her first-line trench on a front of about a quarter of an inch. Disdain died slowly out of her face—a face still unaccountably fresh and girlish—and something like pity at my apparent lack of sophistication took its place.
“You really think it a high hill?” she asked, faintly smiling and gazing at me steadily as though she doubted my sanity.
I noted that her hazel eyes seemed to swim in seas of a wonderfully sparkling liquid.
“Well,” I qualified, affecting funereal gravity, “it’s higher than some hills.”
Her amused smile expanded perceptibly.
“Really, now, have you ever seen very many hills?”
“N-no,” I reluctantly confessed, “not so very many.”
“What induced you to measure this one?”
“Well, I was shadowing somebody,” I said quietly. At last she had given me an opening.