Page:Three speeds forward.djvu/76

 Then he groaned—positively groaned—and murmured something about a "way." "Oh, there must be a way!"

"This is one of the places where there isn't any way," I remarked. "Of course, if you could save papa's life, or find him tied to the track and then cut him free, it might break the ice a bit. But it would be just like papa to be grumpy about it, and keep you at arm's length even then."

"Tell me frankly," he cried, "this isn't any subterfuge on your part? It isn't that I'm unpresentable, is it? Would you be ashamed to know me—be friends, I mean—in the ordinary way? I've been so long a pariah that I'm beginning to lose my nerve. Yet you haven't acted as though there was any real gulf between us."

"Only papa," I said. "But that's a mile wide and ten deep. Oh, no, Mr. Marsden, I like you ever so much, and I think you are nicer and lots more interesting than all the men here put together." (I wanted to pile it