I could do if I tried. You underrate my powers;
you always did. But you are a very restful person, Chris; when my mind
gets tired with worrying over things and trying to understand them, I
find it a perfect holiday to talk to you. You seem to take things as
they are."

"Well, I have to, you see; and what must be must."

"Simple natures like yours are very soothing to complex natures like
mine. When I've lived my life and worn myself out with trying to get the
utmost I can out of everything, I shall spend the first three thousand
years of eternity sitting quite still upon a fixed star without
speaking, with my legs dangling into space, and looking at you. It will
be such a nice rest, before beginning life over again."

"Say two thousand years; you'd never be able to sit still without
speaking for more than two thousand years at the outside. By that time
you'd have pulled yourself together, and be wanting to set about
teaching the angels a thing or two. I know your ways."

"I should enjoy that," laughed Elisabeth.

"So would the angels, if they were anything like me."

Elisabeth laughed again, and looked through the trees to the fields
beyond. Friends were much more comfortable than lovers, she said to
herself; Alan in his palmiest days had never been half so soothing to
her as Christopher was now. She wondered why poets and people of that
kind made so much of love and so little of friendship, since the latter
was obviously the more lasting and satisfactory of the two. Somehow the
mere presence of Christopher had quite cured the sore feeling that Alan
and Felicia had left behind them when they started for their walk
without even asking her to go with them; and she was once more sure of
the fact that she was necessary to somebody--a certainty without which
Elisabeth could not live. So her imagination took heart of grace again,
and began drawing plans for extensive castles in Spain, and arranging
social campaigns wherein she herself should be crowned with triumph. She
decided that half the delight of winning life's prizes and meeting its
fairy princes would be the telling Christopher all about them afterward;
for her belief in his exhaustless sympathy was boundless.

"A penny for your thoughts," he said, after she had been silent for some
moments.

"I was looking at Mrs. Bateson feeding her fowls," said Elisabeth
evasively; "and, I say, have you ever noticed that hens are just like
tea-pots, and cocks like coffee-