No answer.

"Tell me exactly what he said."

"He said, 'I--I--I----' At any rate, I'm satisfied, and I rather wish we
hadn't called him pigs and beasts, and things like that."

"Well?"

"That's all."

"Aren't you going to tell me the reason? Oh, very well--you leave it to
my guessing? Of course it's quite evident he's hopelessly in love with
you, and never ventured to speak for fear of betraying his passion. But,
encouraged by your advances----"

"Molly, go on with that arm, and don't be a vulgar little donkey."

Molly obeyed. Presently: "Cross-patch," she said.

"I'm not," said Nina, "but I want to work, and I like you best when
you're not vulgar."

"You're very rude."

"No: only candid."

Molly's wounded pride, besieged by her curiosity, held out for five
minutes. Then: "Did you talk to him much?"

"Heaps."

"All the way down?"

No answer.

"Is he nice?"

Silence.

"Is he clever?"

"I want to work."

"Well, what I want to know is, and then I'll let you alone--what did you
talk about? Tell me that, and I won't ask another question."

"We talked," said Nina deliberately, taking a clean brush, "we talked
about your brother Cecil. No, I shan't tell you what we said, or why we
talked about him, or anything. You've had your one question, now shut
up."

"Nina," said Molly calmly, "if I didn't like you so much I should hate
you."

"That certainty about the other has always been the foundation of our
mutual regard," said Nina calmly.

Then they laughed, and began to work in earnest.

The next time Molly mentioned the "stranger who might have been
observed" Nina laughed, and said: "The subject is forbidden; it makes
you vulgar."

"And you disagreeable."

"Then it's best to avoid it. Best for you and best for me."

"But do you ever see him now?"

"On occasion. He still travels by the 9.1, and I still have the use of
my eyes."

"Does he ever talk to you like he did that Thursday?"

"No--never. And I'm not going to talk about him to you, so it's no good.
Your turn to choose a subject. You won't? Then it becomes my turn. What
a long winter this is! We seem to have taken years to get from November
to February!"

The time went more quickly between February and May. It was when the
country was wearing its full dress of green and the hawthorn pearls were
opening into baby-roses in the hedgerows that it was Nina's fortune to
be put, by the zealous indiscretion of a mistaken porter, into an