Chapter 6 - Page 2

sequestration, Giles
knew the primitive simplicity of the subject he had started, and
now sounded a deeper note.

"'Twas very odd what we said to each other years ago; I often
think of it. I mean our saying that if we still liked each other
when you were twenty and I twenty-five, we'd--"

"It was child's tattle."

"H'm!" said Giles, suddenly.

"I mean we were young," said she, more considerately. That gruff
manner of his in making inquiries reminded her that he was
unaltered in much.

"Yes....I beg your pardon, Miss Melbury; your father SENT me to
meet you to-day."

"I know it, and I am glad of it."

He seemed satisfied with her tone and went on: "At that time you
were sitting beside me at the back of your father's covered car,
when we were coming home from gypsying, all the party being
squeezed in together as tight as sheep in an auction-pen. It got
darker and darker, and I said--I forget the exact words--but I put
my arm round your waist and there you let it stay till your
father, sitting in front suddenly stopped telling his story to
Farmer Bollen, to light his pipe. The flash shone into the car,
and showed us all up distinctly; my arm flew from your waist like
lightning; yet not so quickly but that some of 'em had seen, and
laughed at us. Yet your father, to our amazement, instead of
being angry, was mild as milk, and seemed quite pleased. Have you
forgot all that, or haven't you?"

She owned that she remembered it very well, now that he mentioned
the circumstances. "But, goodness! I must have been in short
frocks," she said.

"Come now, Miss Melbury, that won't do! Short frocks, indeed! You
know better, as well as I."

Grace thereupon declared that she would not argue with an old
friend she valued so highly as she valued him, saying the words
with the easy elusiveness that will be polite at all costs. It
might possibly be true, she added, that she was getting on in
girlhood when that event took place; but if it were so, then she
was virtually no less than an old woman now, so far did the time
seem removed from her present. "Do you ever look at things
philosophically instead of personally?" she asked.

"I can't say that I do," answered Giles, his eyes lingering far
ahead upon a dark spot, which proved to be a brougham.

"I think you may, sometimes, with advantage," said she. "Look at
yourself as a pitcher drifting on the stream with other pitchers,
and consider what contrivances are most desirable for avoiding
cracks in general, and not only for saving your poor one. Shall I
tell you all about Bath or Cheltenham, or places on the Continent
that I visited last summer?"

"With all my heart."

She then