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with his gentleness. ‘I’ve often thought I heard you calling me—since you’ve been down here. —I’ve waked up suddenly and answered you. —Yes; —isn’t it queer? Perhaps you were thinking of me, Mummy.’

He sat there in his chair, sunken together a little, as though his gallant pose had failed him, and as she saw his smile and how jaded was his face, tears almost mastered her. How she had hurt, how disappointed him! She could have thrown herself in his arms and wept, but that Hester and her friends would soon be upon them.

‘Perhaps I was,’ she said, moving to the last blind. ‘That’s very likely, darling.’

Voices were approaching over the Green, Mr. Gales’s voice; Mrs. Jessup’s. It was fortunate that she had mastered her emotion. Hester and Mr. Gales walked in front. She carried her hat in her hand and the breeze blew back her hair. In her blue linen dress and with something sulky in her demeanour, she had a curiously childlike aspect. Mrs. Jessup, golden hoops swinging against her ochre-coloured cheeks, followed with Mrs. Travers. She was a succulent young woman with glossy black eyes. Mrs. Travers, round-faced and coloured to an apple-blossom pink and white, tripped beside her