I’ve shown it to the Waters: explained that I must be off at once. Only Theo protested angrily, “Your chum ill? How _careless_ of her just when we were such a jolly party, and going to Red Wharf Bay with the Charriers to-morrow, and all!” The others accepted it with scarcely a word. They didn’t even show that they found it odd that Miss Harradine, who lives in Battersea, should hand her telegram in at Euston Station—though I wondered over that myself. Not even Mrs. Waters said a word to press me to wait and send a nurse instead; she didn’t ask when I thought I might come back. If she _looked_ questions I didn’t see them; I was steadfastly keeping my eyes for breakfast-cups, and clocks, and time-tables, and anything but the faces of these people I’m going to leave—for good. All the morning I’ve spent in my bedroom, packing-up. Twice, while I was busily emptying drawers and laying out my things in folded heaps on the bed, I heard outside my window a whistle like a blackbird’s note; but this time I wasn’t taken in for a moment. I knew it wasn’t a blackbird. I took no notice of him. I went on packing, laying my string-soled bathing shoes at the bottom of my trunk. A long time before I shall need _those_ again! I let him whistle. He tried something else. Twice there was a sharp tap on the pane, just as when that thrush was cracking a snail. But I knew that this time it really was a pebble thrown up to catch my attention: thrown, not from the trimly-gravelled sweep in front of a big house, but from the cottage garden planted with sandy white pinks and lad’s-love—thrown to bring me down. I wasn’t to be either whistled or tapped to his side. I rolled my sun-bonnet—there was a little rip where it had caught on a gorse prickle—into a tight pink bundle and rammed it down beside my shoes. I wasn’t going down. Then came a crunching on the cobbles of the path below, and a soft call of “Nancy!” Not I; I wasn’t going down. “Nancy!”—more urgently. “I say!” No! Let him think what he liked of me—rude, obstinate, childish, or sullen—as long as he only didn’t guess _why_ I didn’t mean to go down, or even look out the window to answer him. I couldn’t face it now. Not with what my own lips had first told me of the thing which I had to hold away from me, at arm’s length, for as long as I had the strength. “Nancy!” Evidently he was set on saying something to me—but whether it was about yesterday morning or yesterday afternoon I didn’t care. I was equally set on his not having the chance. Now I was afraid this chance would happen after lunch, and I was grateful to that which prevented his taking me up to Holyhead and seeing me off by the Euston mail alone. I rejoiced over the timely and snorting arrival of that magenta-coloured “auto” of the Charriers, bringing over Monsieur with some more of his business-documents, and Mademoiselle with business that a child might guess at.