e? I don't
think I will. This has put me off for the night. No? Good. Two lemon
squashes, one very sweet."

That was a good idea of Mrs. Yaverland's. The lemon squash was lovely
when it came, and Ellen had time to drink it while they were eating the
chicken, so that there was no competitive flavour to spoil the ice
pudding. While they were waiting for that Mrs. Yaverland smoothed her
eyebrows once again, and gave her nails one more perfunctory polish, and
opened her mouth to speak, but caught her breath and shut it again; and
said, after a moment's silence, "I hope I've ordered the right sort of
pudding. It's so hard to remember all these irrelevant French names. I
wanted you to have the one with crystallised cherries. Richard used to
be very fond of it." She looked round the restaurant more lovingly. "He
liked this place when he was a boy. We used to come here once or twice
every holiday and go to a theatre afterwards."

But Ellen knew what it meant when Richard did that: when he opened his
mouth and then shut it again and was silent, and then said very quickly,
"Darling, I do love you." He had done it the very night before, in
Grand-Aunt Jeannie's parlour at Liberton Brae, when he had wanted to
tell her that his mother had been married to someone who was not his
father before he was born. "It was not her fault. My father didn't stand
by her. He was all right about money. But when he heard about the child,
he was playing the fool as an aide-de-camp with a royal tour round the
Colonies. And he didn't come back. So she lost her nerve"; and that he
had a younger stepbrother, but that the marriage had not been a
success, and that she was always known as Mrs. Yaverland. She was dying
to know what Richard was like in his school-days, and she was willing to
admit that Mrs. Yaverland, when she took him out for treats, had
probably shown a better side of her nature that was not so bad, but
because of this knowledge she leaned forward and asked penetratingly,
"Now, what is it you are really wanting to say?"

The older woman dropped her eyelids guiltily, and then raised them full
of an extraordinary laughing light, as if she was beyond all reason
delighted to have her secret thoughts discovered. "How you see through
me, dear!" she said in a voice that was rallying and affectionate,
charged with an astringent form of love. "All that I wanted to say was
simply that I am so very glad you have come. Perhaps for reasons that
you'll