In the first place, she felt so ridiculously excited, so absurdly glad, that all the things she had been storing up in her mind to tell him dwindled into sudden insignificance. What did they matter, what did anything matter just now, except that Rudolph had come back, and that she must try not to let him guess how glad she was? “Yes,” she said deliberately, after a short pause, looking across the clover field to the sea, and carefully choosing another needle, “I have plenty to tell you. I had it all ready, but--but you came up so suddenly that you have scattered all the threads of the story, and now I don’t remember where to begin.” “I’m so awfully sorry. First you say I make you lose your needle, and then I scatter your threads. I’m afraid you think me in the way.” No answer. “Must I go?” Rudolph got up and drew back a step, standing in the long, rank grass which bordered the clover field in the shade of the trees of the plantation. “If I say yes, I suppose you will say I’m being rude again!” said Mabin, as she threw up at him, from under her big shady hat, a shy glance so full of attraction in its unconscious coquetry that Rudolph also forgot the budget, and thought he had never seen any girl look half so pretty as she did. “I should say,” said he, bending his head as he spoke, and looking with great apparent interest at the work in her hands, “that you were unkind.” There was another pause. Never before, even in the days of her wooden shyness, had Mabin found speech with him so difficult. A lump seemed to rise in her throat whenever she had a remark ready, and for fear of betraying the fact she remained silent altogether. It was odd, too, that Rudolph, who had always been so fluent of speech himself, and had made her seem so dull, had now become infected with her own stupid reticence. “You are a long time finding one,” said he at last. “Yes. I--I seem to have lost all the fine ones,” replied Mabin, bending her head still lower than before over her needle case. “Let me help you. Give me the work first, so that I can judge what size you want.” “How can you tell--a man?” asked Mabin with indignation. And in her contempt she looked up at him again. “Oh-ho, madam! Don’t you know that we sailors can use a needle as well as any woman. Here let me show you.” This was an admirable opportunity for seating himself on the bench beside her; and Rudolph, who had felt a strange hesitation about doing so before, now took the plunge, and placed himself on the end of the wooden seat. “What is this? An antimacassar?” “No. A cooking apron.” “How interesting! Ladies ought not to make such things. They should do things that want lots of bundles of silks of all sorts of colors. This isn’t sufficiently decorative.” “You mean fancy-work!” exclaimed Mabin with an expression of horror. “I hate fancy-work!”