I begin to wonder whether I am falling in love. Ever since Margaret blushed when she passed me on the brae I have been extremely conscious of her existence. I find that I am beginning to look for her, and I go to the dairy on the flimsiest of pretences. I was there three times this afternoon. "What do you want this time?" she asked with a laugh at my third appearance. "I hardly know," I said slowly, "but I think I wanted to see your bare arms again." She hastily drew down her sleeves and reddened; then to cover her confusion she made a show of putting me out forcibly. How I managed to refrain from kissing her tempting lips I don't know. I nearly fell ... but it suddenly came to me that a kiss might mean so very much to her and so little to me and ... I resisted the temptation. She is fast losing her shyness, and she talks to me with growing frankness. She has begun to read much lately, and she devours penny novelettes with avidity. She has a romantic mind, and my realism sometimes shocks her. I happened to meet her in town last Saturday, and I took her to the pictures. She was intensely moved by a romantic film story, and when I explained that the stuff was rank sentimentalism and rhetoric she seemed to be offended. "You criticise everything," she cried angrily, "don't you believe that there is any good in the world?" "You will never be happy," she added seriously, "you criticise too much." "Surely," I cried, "you don't imagine that I criticise you!" "I do," she said bitterly. "You criticise yourself and me and everybody. I am always in terror that I make a slip in grammar before you." "Margaret!" I cried with real sorrow, "I hate to think that I have given you that impression." I was silent for a long time. "Kid," I said, "you are quite right. I do criticise everything and everybody, but a better word is analyse; I analyse myself and then I try to analyse you." "As a boy," I added, "my chief pastime was buying sixpenny watches and tearing their insides out to see how they worked ... but I never saw how they worked." "Yes," she said, "and that's what you would do if you had a wife; you would tear her to bits just to see how she worked ... and you would never find out how she worked either." "Perhaps I might," I said with a smile. "When I dissected watches I was inexperienced; nowadays I could take a watch to pieces and find out how it worked. Perhaps I might manage to put my wife together again, Margaret." "There would be one or two wheels left over," she laughed. "I should like her better without them," said I. "Oh!" she cried impatiently, "why can't you be like other men? What's the use of looking into the inside of everything? Look at father; he never bothered about what mother was; he just thought her perfect and look how happy he is!" "Ah!" I said teasingly, "I understand! You don't want a man to analyse you in case he discovers that you aren't perfect!" She looked at me frankly.