"I beg your pardon," he said, seeing her bewilderment, "but you can't understand perhaps how interested I am in you. I am afraid I have been guilty of staring. You see it is simply amazing to me to find a woman of your refinement and evident culture and education who is content--I might even say joyful--to live in a _barn_! I don't know another woman who would be satisfied. And you seem to have brought up all your children with just such happy, adaptable natures, that it is a great puzzle to me. I--I--why, I feel sort of rebuked! I feel that you and your children are among the great of the earth. Don't thank Elizabeth and me for the little we have been able to do toward making this barn habitable. It was a sort of--I might say homage, due to you, that we were rendering. And now please don't think anything more about it. Let's just talk as if we were friends--that is, if you are willing to accept a couple of humble strangers among your list of friends."
"Why, surely, if you put it that way!" smiled the little woman. "Although I'm sure I don't know what else we could do but be glad and happy over it that we had a barn like this to come to under a sweet blue sky, with a bird and a tree thrown in, when we literally didn't know where we could afford to lay our heads. You know beggars shouldn't be choosers, but I'm sure one would choose a spacious place like this any day in preference to most of the ordinary city houses, with their tiny dark rooms, and small breathless windows."
"Even if 'twas called a barn?"
"Even if 'twas called a barn!" said the woman with a flitting dance in her eyes that reminded him of the girl Shirley.
"Well, I'm learning a lot, I tell you!" said the young man. "The more I see of you all, the more I learn. It's opened my eyes to a number of things in my life that I'm going to set right. By the way, is Miss Hollister here? I brought over a book I was telling her about the other day. I thought she might like to see it."
"She went over to the vesper service at the little church across the fields. They'll be coming home soon, I think. It must be nearly over."
He looked at his watch.
"Suppose I take the car and bring them back. You stay here, Elizabeth. I'll soon be back. I think I can catch them around by the road if I put on speed."