going to let me come to see you when you get settled
here? Twice a week--three times?"

"As if you wanted to see me as often as that. Why, Landry, I'm growing
up to be an old maid. You can't want to lose your time calling on old
maids."

He was voluble in protestations. He was tired of young girls. They were
all very well to dance with, but when a man got too old for that sort
of thing, he wanted some one with sense to talk to. Yes, he did. Some
one with sense. Why, he would rather talk five minutes with her--

"Honestly, Landry?" she asked, as though he were telling a thing
incredible.

He swore to her it was true. His eyes snapped. He struck his palm with
his fist.

"An old maid like me?" repeated Laura.

"Old maid nothing!" he vociferated. "Ah," he cried, "you seem to
understand me. When I look at you, straight into your eyes--"

From the doorway the cook announced that the man with the last load of
furnace coal had come, and handed Laura the voucher to sign. Then needs
must that Laura go with the cook to see if the range was finally and
properly adjusted, and while she was gone the man from the gas company
called to turn on the meter, and Landry was obliged to look after him.
It was half an hour before he and Laura could once more settle
themselves on the cushions in the parlour.

"Such a lot of things to do," she said; "and you are such a help,
Landry. It was so dear of you to want to come."

"I would do anything in the world for you, Laura," he exclaimed,
encouraged by her words; "anything. You know I would. It isn't so much
that I want you to care for me--and I guess I want that bad enough--but
it's because I love to be with you, and be helping you, and all that
sort of thing. Now, all this," he waved a hand at the confusion of
furniture, "all this to-day--I just feel," he declared with tremendous
earnestness, "I just feel as though I were entering into your life. And
just sitting here beside you and putting in these curtain hooks, I want
you to know that it's inspiring to me. Yes, it is, inspiring; it's
elevating. You don't know how it makes a man feel to have the
companionship of a good and lovely woman."

"Landry, as though I were all that. Here, put another hook in here."

She held the fold towards him. But he took her hand as their fingers
touched and raised it to his lips and kissed it. She did not withdraw
it, nor rebuke him, crying out instead, as though occupied with quite
another matter: