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 drawn to scale on square paper, five years to a square and set parallel so that you can see which buddy was ruling on the one throne when another buddy was on the other. I came out fifth in all Scotland. And this is a poem I wrote. It's not a good poem. The subject was excellent--reflections of an absinthe-drinker condemned to death for the murder of his mistress--but I couldn't give it the treatment it desairved. No, you will _nut_ see it. I'll just tear it up. There. It'll do the whaups no harm scattering over the moor, for they've no aesthetic sensibilities. But I shouldn't be surprised if you had, though I've heard that the English don't care much for art. I'm not much good at the poetry, but I have the grace to know it, and so I've just given it up. I make my own blouses, though I know I can't equal the professional product that's sold in the shops, because it comes cheaper. But with the Carnegie library handing out the professional product for nothing, I see no reason why I should write my own poems.