The Making of a Prig. Evelyn Sharp

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СКАЧАТЬ "Then there's nothing I can do for you?"

      "Oh, yes. You can talk, if you will," said Paul, smiling. "Come and sit on the chair at the end of the bed, where you sat the first day you came in. I can see you, then."

      "It is ever so much nicer to see the person you are talking to, isn't it?" observed Katharine, as she obeyed his suggestion.

      "Much nicer," assented Paul, though it had never occurred to him to suggest that Miss Esther should occupy that particular chair. "Now then, talk, please!"

      Katharine made a sign of dismay.

      "I can't," she said. "You begin."

      "Who is your favourite poet?" asked Paul solemnly. She disconcerted him by taking his question seriously, and he had to listen to her enthusiastic eulogies of several favourite poets, before he had an opportunity of explaining himself.

      She detected him in the act of suppressing a yawn, and she stopped suddenly, in the middle of a sentence.

      "I believe I am boring you dreadfully. Shall I go?" she asked. The colour had come into her cheeks, and her voice had a note of distress in it.

      "I want you to tell me something, first," was his unexpected reply. "Do you talk about poetry to young Morton?"

      "Ted? Why, no, of course not. What an awful reflection! Ted isn't a bit poetic, not a little bit; and he would scoff like anything. I have never talked about the things I really like to anybody before; not even to daddy, much."

      This was a little dangerous, and the tomboy daughter of the parson was not the kind of personality that was likely to make the danger fascinating. And Paul's first impulse was to wince at the unstudied frankness of her remark; but four days of seclusion had been exceedingly chastening, and the flattery that underlay her words was not unpleasing to him.

      "Then what made you suppose I cared about poetry, eh?" he asked deliberately.

      "Why," said Katharine, staring at him, "you began it, don't you remember? I thought you wanted me to tell you what I thought."

      "Yes, yes; I am aware of that. But don't you think we have talked enough about poetry for one day?" said Paul, half closing his eyes. He was already regretting his stupidity in expecting her to understand him.

      "How awfully funny you are! First you say—"

      "Yes," said Paul, as patiently as he could, "I know. Don't let us say any more about it. Supposing you were to talk to me now as you would talk to young Morton, for instance!"

      Katharine shook her head doubtfully.

      "I don't think I could. You're not like Ted; you don't like the same sort of things. You're not like me, either."

      Paul smiled grimly.

      "We're both the same in reality, Miss Kitty. Only, you are focussing it from one end, and I from another. I mean, you are too abominably young and I am too abominably old, for conversation. We shall have to keep to the favourite poets, after all."

      Katharine had come round to the side of the bed, and was regarding him critically, with a very serious look on her face.

      "What is the matter?" she asked abruptly. "I hate people to say they are old—when they are nice people. It makes me feel horrid; I don't like it. I never let daddy talk about growing old; it gives me a sort of cold feel, don't you know? I wish you wouldn't. Besides, I am not young, either; I am nearly nineteen. I know I look much younger, because I won't put my hair up; but my skirts are nearly to the ground. What makes you say I am too young to be talked to?"

      "I said you were too young for conversation. It is not quite the same thing, is it?"

      "Isn't it?" said Katharine, and she looked away out of the window for a full minute. What she saw there she could not have told, but it was something that had never been there before. When she brought her eyes round again to his face, the serious look had gone out of them, and they were twinkling with fun. "I know!" she laughed. "Let's talk without any conversation."

      "She's the same woman, after all," was Paul's reflection.

      They did not mention the favourite poets again; but they had no difficulty for the rest of the afternoon in finding something to talk about. It was getting late when the garden gate gave its usual warning, and Katharine got up with a sigh.

      "When shall I see you again?" he asked. They had not gone through the formality of shaking hands, this time.

      "When Aunt Esther has not gone to see a poor woman who has lost her baby," said Katharine, laughing.

      "Nonsense! we will keep the letters and the newspaper for that kind of visit. Won't some one else die, don't you think, so that we can have another talk?"

      "I'll see," said Katharine, which could not strictly be called an answer to his question. But it fully satisfied Paul.

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