"Havers!" she replied. "You were thinking nothing of the sort. You were
wondering what for I carried an iron-monger's shop in my pocket. But
yon rattling's just a tin with some coconuts I've in it that I made last
night and slipped in in case you'd like it, rubbing up against my
protractor."

"But why in Heaven's name," Yaverland asked, "do you carry a protractor
about with you?"

"Off and on I try and keep up my Euclid and do a rider over my lunch,
and I just keep a protractor handy."

Yaverland stopped. "Ellen," he said, "I haven't known you very long."
There was the faintest knitting of her brows, and he added evenly, "I
may call you Ellen, mayn't I? This modern comradeship between men and
women...." "Och, yes," beamed Ellen, fascinated by the talismanic
catchword, and he felt a little ashamed because he had used one of her
pure enthusiasms for his own purposes. Sometimes he was conscious of a
detestable adroitness in his relations with women; it was not
respectful; it was half-brother to the carneying art of the seducer, but
he could not take back the insincerity. "As I say, I haven't known you
very long. But may I ask you a favour?"

"Surely," said Ellen.

"Turn out your pockets."

"But why?"

"I want to see what's in 'em."

"Well," said Ellen resignedly, "there are worse vices than
inquisitiveness. Both pockets?"

"We'll start with the one with the coconut ice and the protractor,
please."

"It's too cold to sit by the roadside and sort them, so you'll have to
take them from me as I get them out. Well, there's the protractor, and
there's the coconut ice. Have a bit? Ah, well, I notice that
grown-up--that people older than me don't seem to care for sweeties
before their dinner. I wonder why. And there's a magnetic compass I
picked up on George the Fourth Bridge. There's a kind of pleasure in
finding the north, don't you think? And--fancy this being here! I
thought I'd lost it long ago. It's a wee garnet I found on the beach at
Elie. I was set up all the afternoon with finding a precious stone. I
would like fine to be a miner in the precious stone mines in Mexico. If
I was a boy I would go. And the rest's just papers. Here's notes on a
Geographical Society lecture on the geology of Yellowstone Park I went
to last spring. Very instructive it was. And here's a diagram I did when
I was working for the Bible examination on the Second Book of Kings--the
lines of the House of Israel and the House of Judah