een running hard and he was out of breath, and his blue eyes
had a queer, strained look, as though they had wanted to cry and had not
had the time. And on his dead-white face the freckles stood out,
ludicrously vivid.

"Oh, I say, Robert, where have you been? I waited and waited for you.
And then I went round to your place--and Miss Forsyth said she didn't know
and she seemed awfully worried--and--and--oh, I say--you're not going
again, are you?"

Robert nodded calmly. But his heart had begun to beat thickly with the
premonition of disaster.

"Yes, I am."

"You might have told me--oh, I say, do listen--do come out a minute--I'm
in an awful hole--there's going to be an awful row--I'm--I'm so beastly
scared----"

He was shivering. He did not seem to know that people were looking at
him. His voice was squeaky and broken. He tugged at Robert's sleeve.
"Oh, I say--do come----"

Robert looked ahead of him. It meant losing his place. Instead of being
so close to her that he could smell the warm, sweet scent of her as she
passed, he would have to peer between peopled heads, and she would be a
far-off vision to him. And yet, oddly enough, it did not occur to him to
refuse. He stood out, and they walked together towards the dark, huddled
army of caravans beyond the tents.

"What is it? What's the row?"

"It's Father--he's got wind of something--Mother told me--he's going to
open my money-box when he comes home to-night. I didn't know he'd kept
count--just the sort of beastly thing he would do--and oh, Robert, when he
finds out I've been cramming him he'll kill me--he will, really----"

At another time Robert might have consoled him with the assurance that
even the beastliest sort of father might hesitate to risk his neck on such
slight provocation, but he himself was overwrought with three days of
peril, of desperate subterfuge and feverish alternations between joy and
anguish. Now, in the mysterious twilight, the most terrible, as the most
wonderful things seemed not merely possible but likely. It made it all
the more terrible that Rufus should have to endure so much because he had
taken a fancy to a silly kid who laughed like a hyena till you laughed
yourself, however much you hated her.

He held Cosgrave's sticky hand tight, and at that loyal understanding
pressure Cosgrave began to cry, shaking from head to foot, jerking out his
words between his chattering teeth.

"It's s-stupid to cry--I do w-wis