“I—I—mean,” he corrected, stammeringly, “sorry to hurt your business.” “You haven’t hurt my business! There’s room for both! It’s a fair competition.” “It’s very forgiving of you to say so. But I said I’d start a coach-service and I had to make my word good, hadn’t I? A man can’t say a thing and leave it empty air.” “No.” In her new humility she was prepared to admire such solid manhood. “But that’s no reason why we should be bad friends, is it?” She had thought that it was; now, that attitude of hers seemed childishly foolish. Self-abasement kept her dumb. “No reason,” he repeated, mistaking her silence for obstinacy, “why we shouldn’t shake hands.” “Only this glass,” she flashed more happily. But it shook in her hand. “Ah!” He sighed with satisfaction. The way to his proposition lay open. He could broach it at once. “Much better to pull together, eh?” “Much,” she echoed. How sweet to see the mists of folly and bitterness rolling away, to feel the weight lifting from her heart. Impulsively she held out her left hand, and as he clasped it, the warmth that came to him from its cold firmness somewhat shook his sense of Blanche’s surpassing charm. Charm, in fact, seemed—to his bewilderment—to be independent of beauty. Or was it that what radiated from Jinny’s little hand was a sense of capable comradeship, missing from that large limp palm which received but did not give? Well, but comradeship was what he wanted, what he was now going to propose. And if charm was thrown in, so much the better for the partnership. “Aha, Son of Belial! So ye’ve come to bog and vaunt your horn here!” It was her forgotten grandfather. Startled from her daydream, she dropped the glass and it shivered to fragments. In the dusk Daniel Quarles, wizened though he was, loomed prophetic over them in snowy beard and smock, his forehead gloomed with thunder and his ancient beaver. VII Will drew out his white handkerchief, and tying it on his whip waved it humorously. The old man was disconcerted in his Biblical vein. “This be a rummy ’un, Jinny. Is he off his head?” “No, Gran’fer—that’s a flag of truce. A signal he’s got something friendly to say.” The Gaffer turned on her. “Then why don’t ye arx him inside like a Christian, ’stead o’ breakin’ my glasses?” “Thank you, Mr. Quarles,” said Will swiftly. He lowered the flag, and almost rushed across the threshold. Jinny retreated before him, and the trio passed silently through the ticking ante-chamber. “Why don’t ye loight the lamp?” the Gaffer grumbled. Jinny gratefully flew to hide her perturbation in the kitchen. True, she would only be throwing more light upon it. But the breathing-space was welcome. “Hadn’t you better have a look at my coach before it gets darker?” Will was reminded to say. “Curse your coach!” He had reawakened the prophet. “Easy, there!” said Will, untying his handkerchief. “It’s to be a family coach now, you see.”