"Very kind." He did not put his pipe back to his lips--keenly alive to the fact that the exigency of the moment demanded a little polite exchange of commonplace.
"Children gone to bed ?" he asked anxiously.
She paused in her slow, deft arrangement of the little table.
"Yes," she answered.
He nodded as if the news were eminently satisfactory.

"Nestorius," he said, adhering to Meredith's pleasantry, "is the jolliest little chap I have met for a long time." "Yes," she answered softly.

"Yes--but listen!" He raised his head, listening as she did--both looking down the river into the gathering darkness.
"I hear the sound of paddles," she said.

"And you ?" "Not yet.

My ears are not so sharp as yours." "I am accustomed to it," the woman said, with some emotion in her voice which he did not understand then.