u needn't do that, my dear, if you don't want to," said Lady
Dashwood. "But pick up the ball, please."

"If I pick the ball up," said the Warden, "the result will be disastrous
to somebody."

He looked at the ball and at the chair, and then, putting his cigar
between his teeth, he lifted the chair from the labyrinth of wool and
placed it out of mischief. Then he picked up the ball and stood holding
it in his hand. Who was the "somebody"? To whom did it belong? It was
obvious to whom it belonged! A long line of wool dropped from the ball
to the carpet. There it described a foolish pattern of its own, and then
from one corner of that pattern the line of wool ran straight to Mrs.
Dashwood's hands. She was sitting there, pretending that she didn't know
that she was very, very slowly and deliberately jerking out the very
vitals of that pattern, in fact disembowelling it. Then the Warden
pretended to discover suddenly that it was Mrs. Dashwood's ball, and
this discovery obliged him to look at her, and she, without glancing at
him, slightly nodded her head, very gravely. Lady Dashwood grasped her
book and pretended to read it.

"I suppose I must clear up this mess," said the Warden, as articulately
as a man can who is holding a cigar between his teeth.

He began to wind up the ball.

"How beautifully you are winding it!" said May Dashwood, without looking
up from her knitting.

The Warden cleared the pattern from the floor, and now a long line of
wool stretched tautly from his hands to those of Mrs. Dashwood.

"Please stop winding," she said quietly, and still she did not look up,
though she might have easily done so for she had left off knitting.

The Warden stopped, but he stood looking at her as if to challenge her
eyes. Then, as she remained obstinately unmoved, he came towards her
chair and dropped the ball on her lap.

"You couldn't know I was winding it beautifully because you never
looked."

"I knew without looking," said May. "I took for granted that you did
everything well."

"If you will look now," said the Warden, "you will see how crookedly
I've done it. So much for flattery."

He stood looking down at her bent head with its gold-brown hair lit up
to splendour by the electric light behind her. Her face was slightly in
shadow. The Warden stood so long that Lady Dashwood was seized with an
agreeable feeling of embarrassment. May Dashwood was apparently
unconscious of the figure beside her. But she rai