ned. "However, we needn't go into that--the point is as I began to
tell you, that we've decided to face it out; and well, you saw me go up to
the Hall this morning."

"What happened?" I asked.

"Nothing," Banks said. "I saw the old man and Mr. Frank, and they were
both polite in a sort of way--no shouting nor anything, though, of course,
Mr. Frank tried to browbeat me--but very firm that nothing had got to
happen; no engagement or running away or anything. She was to come home
and I was to go back to Canada--they'd pay my fare and so on..."

"And you?"

"Me? I just stuck to it we were going to get married, and Mr. Frank tried
to threaten me till the old man stopped him, and then I came out."

"Did you wind up the stable-clock?" I put in.

"Yes. I forgot it last night," he said. "And I hate to see a thing not
working properly."

Dear Banks! I did not know, then, how characteristic that was of him.

I returned to the subject in hand.

"What do you propose to do, then?" I asked. "To get their consent?"

"Just stick to it," he said.

"You think they'll give way?"

"They'll have to, in the end," he affirmed gravely, and continued in a
colder voice that with him indicated a flash of temper. "It's just their
respectability they care about, that's all. If they were fond of her, or
she of them, it would be another thing altogether. But she's different to
all the others, and they've never hit it off, she and them, among
themselves. Why, they treat her quite differently to the others; to Miss
Olive, for instance."

"Do they?" I said, in astonishment. I had been romantically picturing
Brenda as the favourite child, and I could not, at once, see her in this
new light.

"She never got on with 'em, somehow," Banks said. "Anyway, not when they
were alone. Always rows of one sort or another. They couldn't understand
her, of course, being so different to the others."

I was not satisfied with this explanation, but I did not press him for
further details. His insistence on Brenda's difference from the rest of
the Jervaises was evidently as far as he could get. The difference was
obvious enough, certainly, but he would naturally exaggerate it. He was,
as Miss Tattersall had said, "infatuated," but I put a more kindly
construction on the description than she had done--perhaps "enthralled"
would have been a better word.

We had come to a pause. His confidences were exhausted for the present. He
had told me all that it was