There was a strange , wise little smile on his lips as if he had attained to the ultimate wisdom and were laughing in no unkindly fashion at our old blind suppositions and perplexities . Abel had gone on his Great Adventure . Akin To Love David Hartley had dropped in to pay a neighbourly call on Josephine Elliott . It was well along in the afternoon , and outside , in the clear crispness of a Canadian winter , the long blue shadows from the tall firs behind the house were falling over the snow . It was a frosty day , and all the windows of every room where there was no fire were covered with silver palms . But the big , bright kitchen was warm and cosy , and somehow seemed to David more tempting than ever before , and that is saying a good deal . He had an uneasy feeling that he had stayed long enough and ought to go . Josephine was knitting at a long gray sock with doubly aggressive energy , and that was a sign that she was talked out . As long as Josephine had plenty to say , her plump white fingers , where her mother 's wedding ring was lost in dimples , moved slowly among her needles . When conversation flagged she fell to her work as furiously as if a husband and half a dozen sons were waiting for its completion . David often wondered in his secret soul what Josephine did with all the interminable gray socks she knitted . Sometimes he concluded that she put them in the home missionary barrels ; again , that she sold them to her hired man . At any rate , they were very warm and comfortable looking , and David sighed as he thought of the deplorable state his own socks were generally in . When David sighed Josephine took alarm . She was afraid David was going to have one of his attacks of foolishness . She must head him off someway , so she rolled up the gray sock , stabbed the big pudgy ball with her needles , and said she guessed she 'd get the tea . David got up . `` Now , you 're not going before tea ? '' said Josephine hospitably . `` I 'll have it all ready in no time . ''
`` I ought to go home , I s ` pose , '' said David , with the air and tone XXXXX a man dallying with a great temptation .
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