were scratching his head and his vast mouth was
drooping at the corners that it was his fault that the ball crashed so
disastrously out of bounds, and that he felt himself on the verge of
another expulsion. "Oh, ter dash with the thing!" he exclaimed
mournfully, and kicked a root, and lifted his face to the patch of blue
sky above and snuffled. Marion's heart dissolved. She could not let this
poor stupid thing suffer an ache which she was prevented from relieving
only by a fear of rudeness which was probably quite unjustified.
"George!" she called softly, staying among the branches. He gaped about
him. "George!" she called a little louder. "The ball's in the pit, among
the leaves." But he was transfixed by the wonder of the bodyless voice
and would not pay any attention to her directions, but continued to
gape. She saw that she would have to go and show him herself, and after
only half a moment's reluctance she stepped forward. She did not really
mind people seeing her, because she knew that it was only a convention
that she was ugly because she was going to have a baby. For there was
now a richer colour on her cheeks and lips than there had ever been
before and her body was like a vase. It was only when they had awful
thoughts about her that she hated meeting them, and George would not
have awful thoughts about her if she did him a good turn. So she went
over to him, pointing to the pit. "I saw it roll down there, George.
Look! There it is."

But he did not pick up the ball. He appeared to be petrified by the
sight of her. "Make haste," she said, "they'll be waiting for you." At
that he dropped his lids, and his lips thickened, and his face grew red.
Then he raised his head again and looked at her with eyes that were not
dull, as she had always seen them before, but hot and bright, and he
began to shift his weight slowly backwards and forwards from one foot to
the other. Her heart grew sick, because all the world was like this, and
she turned again to the path home. But through the tree-trunks in that
direction there came two other boys in search of the ball--Ned Turk, who
to-day was the station-master at Roothing station, and Bobbie Wickes;
and at the sight of her they stood stock-still as George Postgate had
done, and, like him, dropped their heads and flushed and lifted lewd
faces. A horror came on her. It was as if they had assumed masks to warn
her that they had some secret and sinister business with her. Then one