“Why did you do that?” she asked, arrested, perhaps, by something in my gaze.
“Because,” I answered, “there’s a ghost lives in this well, and maybe with your aid I shall pump it out.”
“Don’t you like the ghost?” she said.
“Very much,” said I, as we climbed the slope to Bert’s.
That evening Mrs. Bert sent her off to bed, and I toiled cheerfully at my manuscripts till the unholy hour of eleven.
Chapter VIII
I PICK PAINT AND A QUARREL
The next morning at breakfast a burned nose confronted me across the table, and the possessor ruefully regarded her sore palms.
“No work for you to-day,” said I. “You will just have to pick out colours for me. The painters are coming.”
I spoke as if we were old friends. I spoke as if it were the most natural thing in the world for a young woman to accompany a young man to his house and pick out paint for him. I spoke, also, as if I had never cursed the prospect of petticoats that advise. So soon can one pair of eyes undo our prejudices, and so easily are the conventions forgotten, in the natural life of the country–at least by such persons as never were much bothered by them, anyhow!