Fortified by my idea, but at the same time rather nervous, because I knew that unless you are a master and the other person happens to be a boy it is much easier to talk about a plain understanding than to arrive at it, I strolled on to the lawn, and after taking a circuitous route I sat down by Nina. I had got her at a disadvantage because she was reading a book which my mother had said was good for her, and if I sat there long enough and bounced a tennis-ball up and down in front of me I knew she was bound to talk. For some reason or other I did not feel like beginning, and this disinclination did not come from chivalry, but I must confess from fear, Nina being armed with all sorts of weapons which if I had possessed I should not have known how to use. "You seem to be very busy," she said after I had bounced my ball up and down two hundred and eleven times without missing it. I took no notice of that remark except to count out loud. "Twelve, thirteen, fourteen" I went on carefully, and when I was half-way through fifteen she threw her hat at the ball and, by a miracle, hit it. "You are as big a baby now as you were ten years ago," she said. "I only wish you were," I answered, and threw the ball away from me. "So that I might everlastingly fetch and carry for you and Fred," she replied quickly. "That isn't true," I retorted; "at least if it is true of me it isn't of Fred. He always treats you well." "You will talk to me about Fred until I shall positively hate him." "I want to talk about him now," I said. "Of course you do, he is your favourite topic of conversation," and really I believe she knew that if she attacked me I should forget to talk about Fred. "You don't seem to see what a friend he is of mine," I answered. "If I liked all the friends of every one I know, I should never have any time to do anything else." "You forget that I happen to be your brother," I said, but I might have known better than to make such a remark, for she seemed to think it was amusing. "Sometimes you are quite delicious," she returned, and I began to feel that we were as far off a plain understanding as we had ever been. "Look here, Nina, you are beginning to give yourself airs, and it is time some one told you," I began desperately. "You will be known as a nice girl gone wrong; you were nice once, and now you talk as if you know a lot of people and try to make out you are about twice as old as you really are. It won't do, it really won't; what's the good of pretending things, it's such a waste of time?" She looked away from me when I had finished, and I had not the vaguest idea how she would reply, but at any rate she did not laugh. "You are really serious for once," she said half questioningly. "I often try to be serious, only no one ever suspects it," I answered, unable to keep myself out of it. "But you are always one-sided."