"
"That's precisely on what I perhaps most build." And she mused a
moment in her friend's way. "I should positively like to take her
in hand!"
He humoured the fancy, though indeed finally to deprecate it. "Oh
but don't, in your zeal, go over to her! I need you most and
can't, you know, be left."
But she kept it up. "I wish they'd send her out to me!"
"If they knew you," he returned, "they would "
"Ah but don't they?--after all that, as I've understood you you've
told them about me?"
He had paused before her again, but he continued his course "They
WILL--before, as you say, I've done." Then he came out with the
point he had wished after all most to make. "It seems to give away
now his game. This is what he has been doing--keeping me along
for. He has been waiting for them."
Miss Gostrey drew in her lips. "You see a good deal in it!"
"I doubt if I see as much as you. Do you pretend," he went on,
"that you don't see--?"
"Well, what?"--she pressed him as he paused.
"Why that there must be a lot between them--and that it has been
going on from the first; even from before I came."
She took a minute to answer. "Who are they then--if it's so
grave?"
"It mayn't be grave--it may be gay.
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