I keep telling you that all the time."
"I am delighted that you are not, as you call it, clever," said
Clarence with undoubted sincerity. "You lack verbal dexterity of a
certain kind, because you have never associated freely with people
you could be disrespectful to. But you are quite a new kind of girl,
or else a survival, and I adore you for it. I never thought I was
going to adore any one so much. Why, I even think it is humorous
when you sit on me, and that, my dear, is a very bad symptom. In
short, I am very much in love with you."
Clarence had a habit of talking that way, and Joy didn't pay much
attention to it. In a phrase of his own, it was like kissing over
the telephone--it didn't get you anywhere, but it had a cunning
sound. It has a warming feeling to think that any one is in love
with you, even if you know they aren't. She said as much.
But Clarence became what was, for him, sulky. Clarence had one
curious thing about him: he never showed his temper at all, but you
couldn't be with him ten minutes without being morally certain that
he had a very bad and sullen one, which he merely kept concealed for
reasons of his own. Whereas John Hewitt's temper, which
undisguisedly was in existence, wasn't a thing you ever thought of
excepting rather amusedly and affectionately. It was such a
little-boy thing in comparison with the grown-up, responsible rest
of him! It would undoubtedly appear some time this afternoon or
evening.
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