of the distinctions
of sex, to fight fairly for itself; but the former prevailed. And then
it was scarcely possible to resist the contagion of the laugh which the
damp air seemed to hold suspended, and bring back in curls and wreaths
of pleasant sound. So Jock commanded himself and replied with an
effort--

"We are just as good for things that we care about as you--but not for
girls' things," he added, with another little fling of the mutual
contempt which they felt for each other. Then after a pause: "I suppose
we may as well go home, for it is getting late; and when it is dark you
would be sure to lose your way----"

"Do you think so?" she said. "Then I will come, for I do not like to be
lost. What should you do if we were lost? Build me a hut to take shelter
in? or take off your coat to keep me warm and then go and look for the
nearest village? That is what happens in some of the Contessa's old
books--but, ah, not in the Tauchnitz now. But it would be nonsense, of
course, for there are the red chimneys of the Hall staring us in the
face, so how could we be lost?"

"When it is dark," said Jock, "you can't see the red always; and then
you go rambling and wandering about, and hit yourself against the trees,
and get up to the ankles in the wet grass and--don't like it at all."
He laughed himself a little, with a laugh that was somewhat like a growl
at his own abrupt conclusion, to which Bice responded cordially.

"How nice it is to laugh," she said, "it gets the air into your lungs
and then you can breathe. It is to breathe I want--large--a whole world
full," she cried, throwing out her arms and opening her mouth. "Because
you know the rooms are small here, and there is so much furniture, the
windows closed with curtains, the floors all hot with carpets. Do they
shut you up as if in a box at night, with the shutters shut and all so
dark? They do me. But as soon as they are gone I open. I like far better
our rooms with big walls, and marble that is cool, and large, large
windows that you can lie and look out at, when you wake, all painted
upon the sky."

"I should think," said Jock, with the impulse of contradiction, "they
would not be at all comfortable----"

"Comfortable," she cried in high disdain, "does one want to be
comfortable? One wants to live, and feel the air, and everything that is
round."

"That's what we do at school," said Jock, waking up to a sense of the
affinities as he had already done to the d