Despite her natural caution, intensified by training, she felt herself thrill to the very evident sincerity of his tones, so that she had to affect mirth to seem at ease. "Dear, dear, what painful monotony; and how many men have said it since these rocks were made; and now you say it,--well, I admit--" "But there's nothing new under the sun, you know." "No; not even a new excuse for plagiarism, is there?" "Well, you see as long as the same old thing keeps true the same old way of telling it will be more or less depended upon. After a few hundred years of experiment, you know, they hit on the fewest words that tell the most, and everybody uses them because no one can improve them. Maybe the prehistoric cave-gentleman, who proposed to his loved one with a war club just back of her left ear, had some variation of the formula suiting his simple needs, after he'd gotten her home and brought her to and she said it was 'all so sudden;' and a man can work in little variations of his own to-day. For example--" "I'm sure we'd best be returning." "For example, I could say, you know, that for keeping the mind active and the heart working overtime the memory of you surpasses any tonic advertised in the backs of the magazines. Or, that--" "I think that's enough; I see you _could_ vary the formula, in case--" "--_have_ varied it--but don't forget I prefer the original unvaried. After all, there are certain things that you can't tell in too few words. Now, you--" "You stubborn person. Really, I know all about myself. I asked you to tell me about yourself." "And I began at once to tell you everything about myself--everything of interest--which is yourself." "I see your sense of values is gone, poor man. I shall question you. Now you are a miner, and I like men of action, men who do things; I've often wondered about you, and seriously, I'm glad to find you here doing something. I remembered you kindly, with real gratitude, indeed. You didn't seem like a New York man either, and I decided you weren't. Honestly, I am glad to find you here at your work in your miner's clothes. You mustn't think we forget how to value men that work." On the point of saying thoughtlessly, "But I'm not working here--I own the mine," he checked himself. Instead he began a defence of the man who doesn't work, but who could if he had to. "For example," he continued, "here we are at a place that you must be carried over; otherwise you'd have to wade through a foot of water or go around that long way we've come. I've rubber boots on, and so I pick you up this way--" He held her lightly on his arm and she steadied herself with a hand between his shoulders. "And staggering painfully under my burden, I wade out to the middle of this subterranean lake." He stopped. "You see, I've learned to do things. I could pick you from that slippery street and put you in your carriage, and I can pick you up now without wasting words about it--"