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“Better? why, it’s lovely!” said she, accepting the situation with frank amusement, and she gave a touch or two to the table to set everything in its place.

Then they lunched together. He would have served her standing, as one serves a queen—but she laughed again, and he took the place opposite her. During lunch they talked.

After lunch they mended the punctured tyre, and talked all the while; then it was past three o’clock.

“You won’t go yet,” he said then, daring greatly for what seemed to him a great stake. “Let me make you some tea—I can, I assure you—and let us see if the tyre holds up”

“Oh, the tyre is all right, thanks to your cleverness”

“Well, then,” said he desperately, “take pity on a poor hermit! I give you my word, I have been here ten months and three days, and I have not in that time spoken a single word to any human being except my bedmaker.”

“But if you want to talk to people why did you begin being a hermit?”

“I thought I didn’t, then.”