"Oh, no, I never learned cricket."
"And what do you do?" Nasmith inquired. "How do you pass the time?"
"I come here to read—Edward is noisy sometimes—and I like to see the mountains."
"Won't you ever come to see us again? My nieces ask about you and talk about you day after day."
"No, I can't do that now. My father would not like it."
"But he was very friendly last year and this spring he asked me to do some important business for him."
"Yes, but I am not so free as last year."
"Why?"
Nancy found this question hard to meet even in English; in Chinese she never would have dreamed of answering. But foreigners, she had understood, discussed these things without reticence.
"My father has promised me to be engaged, to be married."