"Everybody," he said, "is bound to like you."
She changed color and became silent, for a while.
He went on presently.
"We are all as happy as we deserve to be, I suppose. If these people knew what to do in order to make themselves happier, they would go and do that thing. Meantime, there is always love for everybody, and success, and presently the end—is not life everywhere monotonous?"
"No," she replied stoutly; "mine is not."
He was thinking at the moment that of all lives a dressmaker's must be one of the most monotonous. She remembered that she was a dressmaker, and explained:
"There are the changes of fashion, you see."
"Yes, but you are young," he replied, from his vantage-ground of twenty-three years, being two years her superior. "Mine is monotonous when I come to think of it. Only, you see, one does not think of it oftener than one can help. Besides, as far as I have got I like the monotony."
"Do you like work?"
"Not much, I own. Do you?"