“Oh, he looked down at her as if he were shy. Then he said—‘You’ve a long memory, Madala!’ Yes, he called her Madala from the first. It annoyed me. She said—‘Oh, do you remember when Mother was so ill once? You were very kind to me then.’ Then she said something which amazed me. I’d known her for two years before she told me anything about that _Sylvania_ tragedy, but to him she spoke at once. ‘They’re dead,’ she said, ‘Mother and Father. They’re drowned. There isn’t anyone.’ But her voice! It made me quite nervous. I thought she was going to break down. He said, with a stiff sort of effort—‘Yes. I heard.’ That was all. Nothing sympathetic. He just stood and looked at her.” “Well?” said Miss Howe impatiently. “Oh—nothing else. I finished picking up the sandwiches. She introduced me, but I don’t think he realized who I was. It annoyed me very much that she insisted on his eating lunch with us. As I said to her afterwards, it wasn’t suitable. Buns in a bag! But there he sat on a damp stone (he gave Madala his overcoat to sit upon) perfectly contented. I confess I wasn’t cordial. But he noticed nothing. Obtuse! That was how I summed him up from the first—obtuse! And no conversation whatever. Madala did the talking. I believe she asked after every cat and dog for twenty miles round. And her lack of reticence to a comparative stranger was amazing. She told him more about herself in half an hour than she had told me in four years. But she was an unaccountable creature.” “Yes, that’s just it. One never knew what Madala would do next, and yet when she’d done it, one said—‘Of course! Just what Madala _would_ do!’ But it wasn’t like her to neglect you, Nita!”