from the one source. My primrose will fade, but for me it can’t die; nor will the kind hand that gathered it and placed it where it is be forgotten either. There are things one doesn’t forget.”

“I suppose there are,” acquiesced Prudence, her thoughts by some odd twist reverting to William’s table manners. “Sometimes one would like to forget.”

“I shouldn’t,” he averred—“not this, at least.”

She roused herself with a laugh.

“I was thinking of other things—I don’t know why—horrid things. Are you one of a large family?”

“No,” he answered, surprised. “I’m an only son—and rather a bad investment. Why?”

“There are eight of us,” said Prudence—“counting Bobby.”

“Who is Bobby?”

“He’s a dear,” she answered, as though that explained Bobby. “He’s at college: when he leaves he will have to go into the factory; and he hates it so. But there isn’t any help for it. He is the only Graynor to carry on.”

“I don’t think his case calls for sympathy exactly,” he remarked dryly, with a contemplative eye on the tall red chimneys, an eye that travelled slowly over the wide spring-clad countryside and came back to her face and rested there in quiet enjoyment.

“You don’t know,” she returned seriously, “how the kind of life we lead here stifles an imaginative person.”

“You find it dull?” he said. “I suppose it may be. Most country towns are dull.”

“The country isn’t to blame,” she explained; “it’s the routine of dull business, dull duties, dull pleasures, and duller people. You’ve no idea... How should you know? Virtue, as practised in Wortheton, is a quality without smiles, and enjoyment is sinful. Instead of idling happily here I ought to be at home sewing garments for the poor, like the others are doing. I shall be reproved for flaying truant... and I don’t care.”

She laughed joyously. Steele, ignoring the larger part of her communications, leaned towards her, intent on bringing her back to a particular phrase that stuck in his memory.

“Are you happy sitting here—with me?” he asked.

“I’m always happy,” Prudence replied calmly, “when I’ve some one to talk to who isn’t Wortheton.”

“Oh!” he said, a little damped. “So that’s it? Well, I’m happy sitting here talking with some one who is Wortheton.”

“I’m not up to sample,” she said, amused. “If you want local colour, call at the Vicarage—or take William as a specimen. Wortheton is earnest in woof.”

She looked so pretty and so impish as she drew her invidious comparisons that Steele was unable to suppress a smile of sympathy. Her criticism of her brother was wanting in loyalty; but he could find in his heart no blame for her: he did not like William, possibly because William had so pointedly refrained from extending further hospitality to him. The young man had counted on an extension, and was disappointed.

“You’ll shake the dust off your feet some day,” he hazarded, and thought how agreeable it would be to assist in the escape. Visions of scorching across country in a motor with her beside him floated pleasantly through his brain.

“Some day,” she returned a little vaguely, and looked pensively into the distance. “Yes, I’ll do that... But it’s so difficult to find a way.”

“Time will solve that difficulty, I expect,” he said.

She glanced towards him brightly, a look of expectant eagerness shining in her eyes. He felt that when the opportunity offered she would not be slow in seizing it, and was unreasonably angry at the thought of his own uncertain prospects, which offered not the faintest hope of his ever being able to hire, much less own, the necessary car in which to scorch across country with anyone.

“You say such nice, encouraging things,” she observed. “I hope time won’t be long in solving the difficulty. It would be horrid to be forced to live here until I am middle-aged.”

“I’m afraid you will be disappointed when you get out into the world,” he said. “Life is pretty much the same elsewhere as here, I take it. It is what we make it—largely.”

“It is what other people make it for us—largely,” she mimicked him. “I could have quite a good time if I was allowed to. When Bobby is home we do contrive a little fun, but it generally ends in disaster. They sent him back to school a week before term commenced once. Agatha managed that. It is always Bobby who reaps the blame; I am punished vicariously.”

“I call that vindictive,” Steele said.

“We called it that—and other things.” She smiled reminiscently. “It’s odd how these little things stick in the memory. I never sew without recalling that exasperating week when I broke needles maliciously six days in succession. I break them occasionally now—in memoriam.”

He laughed aloud.

“I don’t fancy Miss Graynor gets it all her own way,” he said.

Prudence swung her hat by the brim and gazed up at a patch of blue sky between the trees. A little frown puckered her brow. She had ceased to think of Agatha; her mind was intent on the man beside her, the man who was merely a new acquaintance and yet seemed already a tried and sympathetic friend. She liked him. She wished he were staying longer in Wortheton. She wished William had invited him to spend his last evening at Court Heatherleigh. Strictly speaking, courtesy demanded it; but William was not always courteous. She held a well-founded belief that William sought to punish her by this omission; and it pleased her to reflect that she was in a sense getting even with him through the present informal meeting. She promised herself the satisfaction of relating her morning’s experience at lunch for his and Agatha’s delectation. They so entirely disapproved of such harmless pleasures.

“If you’ve really nothing to do,” she said, “let us go for a stroll in the woods. It’s lovely there; and we can talk... I feel like a recluse enjoying an unexpected holiday: I want to make the most of it. And I love to talk.”

“So do I—with some people,” he returned in his level, pleasant voice, and lent her a hand to assist her down from the stile. “It’s as well to be hung for a sheep as a lamb, don’t you think? Why not enlarge on the idea? I know a shop where we can procure quite edible pasties. If you are agreeable, I could fetch provisions, and we can picnic in the woods.”

“But that’s a capital idea,” said Prudence, with a careless disregard for developments, which further evidenced the emancipation Miss Agatha already foresaw.

“There’ll be such a row,” she said cheerfully, as they walked across the fields side by side. “It was just such another excursion that Bobby was sent back to school for.”

“For a little thing like that!” He laughed. “Well, they can’t send me back to school anyhow, and I have a comfortable feeling in my mind that you’ll be able to keep your end up. Miss Graynor would be wise to recognise that her day is done. I’ll return with you and take my share of the censuring. With luck I might be asked to stay to tea.”

This audacity amused them both. There was gladness in the spring day, the gladness of irresponsible youth, the gladness of life in its promise with the