THE WOOD-CARVING CLASS
"I'll try," said Kipps. "It reely doesn't hurt—not anything to matter."
Presently Miss Walshingham came to him as he carved heroically with his hand bandaged in her handkerchief. There was a touch of a novel interest in her eyes. "I'm afraid you're not getting on very fast," she said.
The freckled girl looked up and regarded Miss Walshingham.
"I'm doing a little, anyhow," said Kipps. "I don't want to waste any time. A feller like me hasn't much time to spare."
It struck the girls that there was a quality of modest disavowal about that "feller like me." It gave them a light into this obscure person, and Miss Walshingham ventured to commend his work as "promising" and to ask whether he meant to follow it up. Kipps didn't "altogether know"—"things depended on so much," but if he was in Folkestone next winter he certainly should. It did not occur to Miss Walshingham at the time to ask why his progress in art depended upon his presence in Folkestone. There was some more questions and answers—they continued to talk to him for a little time, even when Mr. Chester Coote had come into the room—and when at last the conversation had died out it dawned upon Kipps just how much his cut wrist had done for him. . . .
He went to sleep that night revising that conversation for the twentieth time, treasuring this and expending that, and inserting things he might have said to Miss Walshingham, things he might still say about
75
