“You’re not fit. You weren’t yesterday, but now it’s as plain as a pikestaff. You’re in for these infernal measles!” It was a fair deduction from a face so flushed and such heavy eyes: again Evan dropped them, and shook a head that looked heavier still. “Oh, no, I’m not. I rather wish I was!” he muttered bitterly. “Why? What’s happened? What’s wrong?” Evan flung up his hangdog head in sudden desperation. “I’m in a frightful scrape!” “Not you, Evan!” “I am, though.” “What sort of scrape?” “I don’t know how to tell you. I don’t know what you’ll think.” Jan got him into the arm-chair, and took the other one himself. It was something to feel that Evan cared what he thought. “Come! I don’t suppose it’s anything so very bad,” said he, encouragingly. “Bad enough to prevent me from playing to-day, I’m afraid.” “You surely don’t mean—that anybody’s dead?” “I know I wish I was!” “It isn’t that, then?” “No; but I’ve got to meet somebody at two o’clock. I simply must,” declared Evan, with an air of dull determination. “Some of your people?” asked Jan, and supplied the negative himself before Evan could shake his head. “I thought not. Then do you mind telling me who it is?” No answer from Evan but averted looks. “Well, where is it that you’ve got to meet them?” “Yardley Wood.” Jan was there in a flash; he was looking over the posts and rails at the besotted figure waving and beckoning in the lower meadow; he was meeting Sandham and Evan, hurrying up the lane, not five minutes afterwards. “Is it old Mulberry?” asked Jan, with absolute certainty that it was. “What do you know about him?” cried Evan suspiciously. Jan forced a conciliatory grin. “I thought everybody knew something about Mulberry,” he said. “But what makes you think of him the moment I mention Yardley Wood?” “I saw him come out the other Sunday.” “I daresay. He hides there half the summer. But what’s that got to do with me?” “He waved to us by mistake, and the next thing was that we met you and Sandham coming up as we went down.” “So you put two and two together on the spot?” “Well, more or less between us.” “Oh, Carpenter, of course! He was with you, wasn’t he?” “Yes. But Chips wouldn’t let out a word, any more than I would, Evan. Not,” added Jan, “that there’s anything to let out in what you’ve told me as yet.... _Is_ there, Evan?” The opportunity afforded by a pointed pause had not been taken. “You may as well tell me now you’ve got so far—but don’t you if you’ve thought better of it.” There again was the studious delicacy that was growing on Jan, that had always been in his blood. Evan flung up his head once more. “I’ll tell you, of course. I came to tell you. It’s nothing awful after all. There’s no harm in it, really; only you can do things at home, quite openly, with your people, that become a crime if you do them here.”