Page:E Nesbit - The Literary Sense.djvu/296

284 "Good!" said she to herself; "he means to talk. We shan't sit staring at each other for two hours like stuck pigs. And he really doesn't know me? Or is it the wife? Oh! I wish I'd never come to this horrible country!" Aloud she said, "Yes, and how pretty the trees and fields are—"

"So—so nice and green, aren't they?" said he.

And she said, "Yes."

Each inwardly smiled. In the old days each had been so eager for the other's good opinion, so afraid of seeming commonplace, that their conversations had been all fine work, and their very love-letters too clever by half. Now they did not belong to each other any more, and he said the trees were green, and she said "Yes."

"There seem to be a great many people in Bruges," said she.

"Yes," he said, in eager assent. "Quite a large number."

"There is a great deal to be seen in these old towns. So quaint, aren't they?"

She remembered his once condemning in a friend the use of that word. Now he echoed it.

"So very quaint," said he. "And the dogs