"Oh, did the wretch go too fast?" called Miss Pembroke from her bedroom
window.

"I went too fast for him." He spoke quite sharply, and before he had
time to say he was sorry and didn't mean exactly that, the window had
shut.

"They've quarrelled," she thought. "Whatever about?"

She soon heard. Gerald returned in a cold stormy temper. Rickie had
offered him money.

"My dear fellow don't be so cross. The child's mad."

"If it was, I'd forgive that. But I can't stand unhealthiness."

"Now, Gerald, that's where I hate you. You don't know what it is to pity
the weak."

"Woman's job. So you wish I'd taken a hundred pounds a year from him.
Did you ever hear such blasted cheek? Marry us--he, you, and me--a
hundred pounds down and as much annual--he, of course, to pry into all
we did, and we to kowtow and eat dirt-pie to him. If that's Mr. Rickety
Elliot's idea of a soldier and an Englishman, it isn't mine, and I wish
I'd had a horse-whip."

She was roaring with laughter. "You're babies, a pair of you, and you're
the worst. Why couldn't you let the little silly down gently? There he
was puffing and sniffing under my window, and I thought he'd insulted
you. Why didn't you accept?"

"Accept?" he thundered.

"It would have taken the nonsense out of him for ever. Why, he was only
talking out of a book."

"More fool he."

"Well, don't be angry with a fool. He means no harm. He muddles all day
with poetry and old dead people, and then tries to bring it into life.
It's too funny for words."

Gerald repeated that he could not stand unhealthiness.

"I don't call that exactly unhealthy."

"I do. And why he could give the money's worse."

"What do you mean?"

He became shy. "I hadn't meant to tell you. It's not quite for a lady."
For, like most men who are rather animal, he was intellectually a prude.
"He says he can't ever marry, owing to his foot. It wouldn't be fair to
posterity. His grandfather was crocked, his father too, and he's as bad.
He thinks that it's hereditary, and may get worse next generation. He's
discussed it all over with other Undergrads. A bright lot they must be.
He daren't risk having any children. Hence the hundred quid."

She stopped laughing. "Oh, little beast, if he said all that!"

He was encouraged to proceed. Hitherto he had not talked about their
school days. Now he told her everything,--the "barley-sugar," as he
called it, the pins in chapel, and how one afternoon he had tied him