“Get Mr. Vandeleur, if he wants cheering up, to take you to ‘_The Keening of Deidre_,’” said I. “Good-bye!” * * * * * It threatened to be a silent motor-drive back to Sevenoaks. Again I felt that I should have to be the one to take the plunge into conversation. “Well?” I said. “Didn’t you think Miss Harradine a very pretty girl?” “Beautiful hair,” said Mr. Waters, “hasn’t she?” “Oh, lovely.” Silence. I saw that Mr. Waters hadn’t realized what I suspected: namely, that Sydney was beginning to find my chum quite sufficiently “lovely” as a girl, not merely as a confidante for his sorrows about “another,” who was, as he imagined, “another’s.” But I was longing to hear some comment on Sydney. I should have been left longing, I suppose, if I hadn’t said straight out, “What _did_ you think of Mr. Vandeleur?” “Oh, come! What a question! How can one tell, after seeing a man for half an hour? He seemed—clever, and all that,” fenced my companion. “Of course he’s not the sort of man _I_ get thrown much with in that sordid, detestable City of mine, as you call it. What does he do?” “He doesn’t have to ‘do’ anything.” “Rather lucky for him,” remarked Mr. Waters, in a tone I didn’t fathom. I said, “But he does draw and design—and he writes dramatic criticisms—and he composes.” “Gifted sort of chap,” said Mr. Waters smoothly. “I suppose——” And then stopped. “You suppose what?” I urged. “No, do tell me,” as he looked obstinately ahead and shut his lips into that line. “You _must_, Billy!” Then I found myself laughing and colouring a little with surprise. For the first time I’d used that absurd name in speaking directly to him. He turned to me, smiling once more in quite a friendly way. But it was not to answer my question. It was to ask another. “Nancy, you know I shall expect you to write to me? When you’re at Porth Cariad with my mother and the girls, I mean.... It’ll look funny if you don’t.” “Oh, of course. For the look of the thing,” said I, “I’ll write.” “Sorry to trouble you. You can put a blank sheet into the envelope, you know, if you like.” “I hadn’t thought of that!” I laughed, glad to be once again on comfortable terms of chatty friendship. “But—so I can.” “Well, as long as you don’t forget to send _something_,” said Billy Waters. * * * * * He reminded me of this once again, on Euston platform. For we—his mother, his sisters, his official _fiancée_ and the little dog—left London at eleven o’clock on the following Saturday morning. That evening we were all among the sand-slopes and the gorse and the soft calling of the waves at Porth Cariad. CHAPTER XXI THE FIRST LETTERS “Hullo, Robert Roberts! Any letters for us?” sang out Theo.