He did everything that he could to make her birthday a happy one. He was with her all the day. He allowed her to read to him a long piece of the story that she was then writing, a very tiresome business because she could not read her own script, and because there were so many characters that he could never keep track of any of them. He went blackberrying with her in the afternoon and gave her all the best blackberries. But nothing could raise his spirits. The beautiful day said nothing to him. He felt sick in the evening from eating too many blackberries and went to bed directly after supper. IV The days that followed could hardly help but be jolly because the weather was so lovely—still, breathless days, when the world seemed to be painted in purple and blue on a wall of ivory, when the sea came over the sand with a ripple of utter content, when the moon appeared early in the evening, a silver bow, and mounted gently into a sky thick with stars, when every sound, the rattle of carts, the barks of dogs, the cries of men, struck the air sharply like blows upon iron. Yet, though the world was so lovely and everyone—even Aunt Amy—was in the best and most contented tempers, something hung over him like a black, heavy cloth. His pride in himself was gone. He had done something shabbier than even the Dean’s Ernest would do. He continued to see Mary with new eyes. She was a decent kid. He looked back over the past months and saw how much more decent she had been to him than he had been to her. She had been irritating, of course, but then that was because she was a girl. All girls were irritating. Just look at Helen, for instance! Meanwhile he never glanced at the book again. It lay there neglected in its paper. One day Mary received in a letter a postal order for ten shillings. This was a present from a distant aunt in America who had suddenly remembered Mary’s birthday. Filled with glee and self-importance, she went in to St. Mary’s with Miss Jones to spend it. That evening when Jeremy was washing his hands there was a knock on his door and Mary’s voice: “May I come in?” “Yes,” he said. She came in, her face coloured with mysterious purpose. In her hands she held a paper parcel. “Oh, are you washing your hands, Jeremy?” she said, her favourite opening in conversation being always a question of the obvious. The red evening sunlight flooded the room. “What is it?” Jeremy asked rather crossly. She looked at him pleadingly, as though begging him to save her from the difficulties of emotion and explanation that crowded in upon her. “Oh, Jeremy, St. Mary’s was lovely, and there was a man with an organ and a monkey, and I gave the monkey a penny and it took it in its hand and took off its cap. . . . Miss Jones has got a cold,” she added, “and sneezed all the way home.” “She always has a cold,” he said, “or something.”