It's unlucky to pass people on the stairs. Don't you
know that?"

He descended again as she bade him, laughing as he did so, and waited
until she had come down.

"Mother's much better now," she said when she had reached his side.
"She's coming down to dinner."

"I'm awfully glad," he replied. He hesitated for a second or two,
standing with one foot on the last step of the stairs. "I say, Mary," he
said.

"Yes, Quinny!" she answered, turning to him.

So she had not forgotten that she had called him by his nick-name.

"I say, Mary," he said again, still undecided as to whether he should
speak his mind or not.

"Yes?" she repeated.

He went up a step or two of the stairs. "Oh, I don't know," he
exclaimed. "I only wanted to say how nice it is to be here again!"

"Oh, yes!" Mary said, and he imagined that her tone was one of
disappointment.

"I'll be down presently," he went on, and then he ran up the stairs to
his room.

"I don't know," he said to himself, as he closed his door. "I'm damned
if I know!"

He sat down at the writing-table and spread a sheet of notepaper in
front of him. "I wish I knew!..." he murmured, and he wrote down the
date. "Mary is awfully nice, and I like her of course, but Sheila!..."

He put the pen down again and sat back in his chair and stared out of
the window. Out in the farmyard, he could hear the men bedding the
horses, and there was a clatter of cans from the dairy where the women
were turning the milk into cream. He could hear a horse whinnying in its
stall ... and as he listened he seemed to see Sheila, as he had seen her
on her uncle's farm before he had failed in courage, standing outside
the byre with a crock in her hands and a queer, teasing look in her
eyes. "You're the quare wee fella!" she was saying, and then, "I like
you quaren well!..."

He seized the pen again and began to write.

7

He had almost finished the letter when Gilbert knocked on his door and
shouted, "Can I come in, Quinny?"

He put the letter under the blotting paper, and called, "Yes, Gilbert!"
in reply.

"Aren't you ready yet?" Gilbert asked.

"No, not yet, but I won't be long changing!"

"Righto!" said Gilbert, going to the other window and looking across the
fields. "Rum go about Ninian's uncle, isn't it?" he said, playing with
the tassle of the blind.

"Eh?" said Henry.

"There must be something low in a man who marries a woman like that,
don't you think?"

"Oh, I don't know.