“Mr. Griggs, are you very busy?”

“Oh dear, no—­nothing to speak of,” I went on writing—­the unprecedented—­folly—­the—­blatant—­charlatanism——­

“Mr. Griggs, do you understand these things?”

——­Lord Beaconsfield’s—­“I think so, Miss Westonhaugh”—­Afghan policy——­There, I thought,

I think that would rouse Mr. Currie Ghyrkins, if he ever saw it, which I trust he never will.  I had done, and I folded the numbered sheets in an oblong bundle.

“I beg your pardon, Miss Westonhaugh; I was just finishing a sentence.  I am quite at your service.”

“Oh no!  I see you are too busy.”

“Not in the least, I assure you.  Is it that tangled skein?  Let me help you.”

“Oh thank you.  It is so tiresome, and I am not in the least inclined to be industrious.”

I took the wool and set to work.  It was very easy, after all; I pulled the loops through, and back again and through from the other side, and I found the ends, and began to wind it up on a piece of paper.  It is singular, though, how the unaided wool can tie itself into every kind of a knot—­reef, carrick bend, bowline, bowline in a bight, not to mention a variety of hitches and indescribable perversions of entanglement.  I was getting on very well, though.  I looked up at her face, pale and weary with a sleepless night, but beautiful—­ah yes—­beautiful beyond compare.  She smiled faintly.

“You are very clever with your fingers.  Where did you learn it?  Have you a sister who makes you wind her wool for her at home?”

“No.  I have no sister.  I went to sea once upon a time.”

“Were you ever in the navy, Mr. Griggs?”

“Oh no.  I went before the mast.”

“But you would not learn to unravel wool before the mast.  I suppose your mother taught you when you were small—­if you ever were small.”

“I never had a mother that I can remember—­I learned to do all those things at sea.”

“Forgive me,” she said, guessing she had struck some tender chord in my existence.  “What an odd life you must have had.”

“Perhaps.  I never had any relations that I can remember, except a brother, much older than I. He died years ago, and his son is my only living relation.  I was born in Italy.”

“But when did you learn so many things?  You seem to know every language under the sun.”

“I had a good education when I got ashore.  Some one was very kind to me, and I had learned Latin and Greek in the common school in Rome before I ran away to sea.”

I answered her questions reluctantly.  I did not want to talk about my history, especially to a girl like her.  I suppose she saw my disinclination, for as I handed her the card with the wool neatly wound on it, she thanked me and presently changed the subject, or at least shifted the ground.

“There is something so free about the life of an adventurer—­I mean a man who wanders about doing brave things.  If I were a man I would be an adventurer like you.”