Page:E Nesbit - The Literary Sense.djvu/149

Rh do? How else could she exercise her most perfectly developed talent—that of smiling on people till they loved her? We all like to do that which we can do best. And she never felt so contented as when she was exercising this incontestable talent of hers. She did not know the talent for what it was. She called it "being nice to people."

So every day saw her, with roses freshening in her cheeks, driving over the moors in the wheeled tea-tray. And now she sold regularly. One day he said—

"What a wife you'd make for a business chap!" But even that didn't warn her, because she happened to be thinking of Jack—and she thought how good a wife she meant to be to him. He was a "business chap" too.

"What are you really—by trade, I mean?" he said on another occasion.

"Nothing in particular. What did you think I was?" she said.

"Oh—I dunno—I thought a lady's maid, as likely as not, or maybe in the dressmaking. You aren't a common sort—anyone can see that."

Again pique and pleasure fought in her.