"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: "Landry, careful, my dear boy; you'll make me prick my fingers. Ah--there, you did." He was all commiseration and self-reproach at once, and turned her hand palm upwards, looking for the scratch. "Um!" she breathed. "It hurts." "Where now," he cried, "where was it? Ah, I was a beast; I'm so ashamed." She indicated a spot on her wrist instead of her fingers, and very naturally Landry kissed it again. "How foolish!" she remonstrated. "The idea! As if I wasn't old enough to be--" "You're not so old but what you're going to marry me some day," he declared. "How perfectly silly, Landry!" she retorted. "Aren't you done with my hand yet?" "No, indeed," he cried, his clasp tightening over her fingers. "It's mine. You can't have it till I say--or till you say that--some day--you'll give it to me for good--for better or for worse." "As if you really meant that," she said, willing to prolong the little situation. It was very sweet to have this clean, fine-fibred young boy so earnestly in love with her, very sweet that the lifting of her finger, the mere tremble of her eyelid should so perturb him. "Mean it! Mean it!" he vociferated. "You don't know how much I do mean it. Why, Laura, why--why, I can't think of anything else." "You!" she mocked. "As if I believed that. How many other girls have you said it to this year?" Landry compressed his lips. "Miss Dearborn, you insult me." "Oh, my!" exclaimed Laura, at last withdrawing her hand. "And now you're mocking me. It isn't kind. No, it isn't; it isn't kind." "I never answered your question yet," she observed. "What question?" "About your coming to see me when we were settled. I thought you wanted to know." "How about lunch?" said Page, from the doorway. "Do you know it's after twelve?"