"I have no
other friends like you. You ARE a friend, aren't you, in your
queer way?" She did not wait for an answer, but went on: "You
don't come to see me when I ask you. You don't send me any word.
You make me feel that, compared to your concerns with beetles and
flies, I'm quite hopelessly unimportant. And yet here I find you
giving up your own pursuits and wasting your time to plan and
watch and think for us."
"For you," he corrected.
"For me," she accepted sweetly. "What an ungrateful little pig you
must think me! But truly inside I appreciate it and thank you, and
I think--I feel that perhaps it amounts to a lot more than I
know."
He made a gesture of negation.
"No great thing," he said. "But it's the best I can do, anyway. Do
you remember what the mediaeval mummer said, when he came bearing
his poor homage?"
"No. Tell it to me."
"It runs like this: 'Lady, who art nowise bitter to those who
serve you with a good intent, that which thy servant is, that he
is for you.'"
"Polly Brewster," said the girl to herself, as she walked, slowly
and musingly, back to her room, "the busy haunts of men are more
suited to your style than the free-and-untrammeled spaces of
nature, and well you know it.
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