"Cannot you tell me something, Ean?"
He laughed boyishly, in a way that should have reassured me.
"I will tell you something, Harriet. Do you remember the bronze pearls that were stolen from my flat in Paris more than three years ago?"
"Of course, Ean; I remember them perfectly. How should I forget them? You don't mean to say — —"
"That I have recovered them? No — not quite. But I know where they are."
"Then you will recover them, Ean?"
"Ah, that is for tomorrow. Let Okyada, by the way, have the room next to my dressing-room. He won't interfere with my clothes, Harriet. You will still be able to coddle me as much as you please, and of course, I will always warm the scissors before I cut my nails in winter."
He was laughing at me again — a little unjustly, perhaps, as I have always believed that influenzas and rheums come to those who allow anything cold to touch the skin — but this is my old womanish fancy, while Ean is not altogether free himself from those amiable weaknesses and fads which take some part in all our lives. He, for instance, must have all his neckties of one colour in a certain drawer; some of his many clothes must go to the press upon one day and others upon the next He buys great quantities of things from his hosier, and does not wear one half of them. I am always scolding him for walking about the grounds at night in his dress clothes; but he never does so without first warming his cloth cap at the fire, if it be winter. I make mention of these trifles that others may understand how little there is of real weakness in a very lovable, manly, and courageous character. Beyond that, as the world knows well, Ean is one of the greatest linguists and most accomplished scholars in all Europe.
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