which you inaugurate (or whatever you do
when it's an oasis) by smashing the top coal and making a great blaze.
And then you go ever so close, and can talk.

"Are you sure it isn't Colonel Lund's mistake? Old gentlemen get very
fanciful." Thus Miss Wilson. But it seems Sally hasn't much doubt.
Rather the other way round, if anything!

"I thought it might be, all the way to Norland Square. Then I changed
my mind coming up the hill. Of course, I don't know about mamma till
I ask her. But I expect the Major's right about Mr. Fenwick."

"But how does _he_ know? How do you know?"

"I don't know." Sally tastes the points of a holly-leaf with her
tongue-tip, discreetly, to see how sharp they are, and cogitates. "At
least," she continues, "I _do_ know. He never takes his eyes off mamma
from the minute he comes into the house."

"Oh!"

"Besides--lots of things! Oh no; as far as that goes, I should say
_he_ was spooney."

"I see. You're a vulgar child, all the same! But about your
mother--that's the point."

The vulgar child cogitates still more gravely.

"I should say _now_," she says, after thinking it over, "that--only
I never noticed it at the time, you know----"

"That what?"

"That mamma knows Mr. Fenwick is spooney, and looks up at times to see
that he's going on."

Laetitia seems to receive this idea with some hesitation or reserve.
"Looks up at times to see if he's going on?" she repeats inquiringly.

"Yes, of course--like we should. Only I didn't say 'see if.' I said
'see that.' It makes all the difference."

Miss Wilson breaks into a laugh. "And there you are all the time
looking as if butter wouldn't melt in your mouth, and as grave as
a judge."

Sally has to acquiesce in being kissed by her friend at this point;
but she curls up a little as one who protests against being
patronised. "We-e-e-ell!" she says, lengthening out the word, "why
not? I don't see anything in _that_!"

"Oh no, dear--_that's_ all right! Why shouldn't it be?"

But this isn't candid of Laetitia, whose speech and kiss had certainly
appeared to impute suppressed insight, or penetration, or sly-pussness,
or something of that sort to her young friend. But with an implied
claim to rights of insight, on her own account, from seniority. Sally
is _froissee_ at this, but not beyond jerking the topic into a new
light.

"Of course, it's their being grown up that makes one stare so. If it
wasn't for that...." But this gives away her