It was a Saturday afternoon.  Margaret had come into the workshop with her sewing, as usual.  The papers on the round table had been neatly cleared away, and Richard was standing by the window, indolently drumming on the glass with a palette-knife.

“Not at work this afternoon?”

“I was waiting for you.”

“That is no excuse at all,” said Margaret, sweeping across the room with a curious air of self-consciousness, and arranging her drapery with infinite pains as she seated herself.

Richard looked puzzled for a moment, and then exclaimed, “Margaret, you have got on a long dress!”

“Yes,” said Margaret, with dignity.  “Do you like it,—­the train?”

“That’s a train?”

“Yes,” said Margaret, standing up and glancing over her left shoulder at the soft folds of maroon-colored stuff, which, with a mysterious feminine movement of the foot, she caused to untwist itself and flow out gracefully behind her.  There was really something very pretty in the hesitating lines of the tall, slender figure, as she leaned back that way.  Certain unsuspected points emphasized themselves so cunningly.

“I never saw anything finer,” declared Richard.  “It was worth waiting for.”

“But you shouldn’t have waited,” said Margaret, with a gratified flush, settling herself into the chair again.  “It was understood that you were never to let me interfere with your work.”

“You see you have, by being twenty minutes late.  I’ve finished that acorn border for Stevens’s capitals, and there’s nothing more to do for the yard.  I am going to make something for myself, and I want you to lend me a hand.”

“How can I help you, Richard?” Margaret asked, promptly stopping the needle in the hem.

“I need a paper-weight to keep my sketches from being blown about, and I wish you literally to lend me a hand,—­a hand to take a cast of.”

“Really?”

“I think that little white claw would make a very neat paper-weight,” said Richard.

Margaret gravely rolled up her sleeve to the elbow, and contemplated the hand and wrist critically.

“It is like a claw, isn’t it.  I think you can find something better than that.”

“No; that is what I want, and nothing else.  That, or no paper-weight for me.”

“Very well, just as you choose.  It will be a fright.”

“The other hand, please.”

“I gave you the left because I’ve a ring on this one.”

“You can take off the ring, I suppose.”

“Of course I can take it off.”

“Well, then, do.”

“Richard,” said Margaret severely, “I hope you are not a fidget.”

“A what?”

“A fuss, then,—­a person who always wants everything some other way, and makes just twice as much trouble as anybody else.”

“No, Margaret, I am not that.  I prefer your right hand because the left is next to the heart, and the evaporation of the water in the plaster turns it as cold as snow.  Your arm will be chilled to the shoulder.  We don’t want to do anything to hurt the good little heart, you know.”