“Very well. I will take the next year. You will take the year after. And so on.”
“You are very kind,” she answered—“but I should like to propose an improvement on your plan.”
“What improvement?” he asked, rather sharply.
“If you will leave the five years, from ‘seventy-six to ‘eighty-one, entirely to me,” she resumed, “and take the next five years, reckoning backward from ‘seventy-six, you will help me to better purpose. Sir Jervis expects me to look for reports of Central American Explorations, through the newspapers of the last forty years; and I have taken the liberty of limiting the heavy task imposed on me. When I report my progress to my employer, I should like to say that I have got through ten years of the examination, instead of five. Do you see any objection to the arrangement I propose?”
He proved to be obstinate—incomprehensibly obstinate.
“Let us try my plan to begin with,” he insisted. “While you are looking through ‘seventy-six, let me be at work on ‘seventy-seven. If you still prefer your own arrangement, after that, I will follow your suggestion with pleasure. Is it agreed?”
Her acute perception—enlightened by his tone as wall as by his words—detected something under the surface already.
“It isn’t agreed until I understand you a little better,” she quietly replied. “I fancy you have some object of your own in view.”
She spoke with her usual directness of look and manner. He was evidently disconcerted. “What makes you think so?” he asked.
“My own experience of myself makes me think so,” she answered. “If I had some object to gain, I should persist in carrying it out—like you.”