“They looked blue, and she didn’t look like a goddess. She looked like a little girl. Well, there she stood, with her grey skirt and her lavender silk, and her cowslips—you know they have a sweet smell, cowslips, a very sweet smell—and tumbled them all down on the tombstone. Then she wanted string. Carey seemed to wake up at that. He’d been looking at her as if he had dreamed her. He produced string. He was that sort of man. Then she made her cowslip ball. I held one end of the string and he held the other, and she nipped the stalks off the flowers and strung them athwart it. That is the way to make a cowslip ball.” “Nita, I love you!” cried Miss Howe for the second time, and the others laughed. She stopped. She stiffened. “I don’t know what you mean.” “Ne’ mind! Go on!” She said offendedly— “There’s nothing more to tell. We got up and came away.” But as we sat silently by, still waiting, the storyteller crept back into her face. “Oh, yes—” up went her forefinger. “It was then that it happened. We went stumbling over the graves, round to the east end, to see the lepers’ window, a particularly interesting one. Ruskin mentions it. Yes, Carey came with us. There’s a little bit of bare lawn under the window before the stones begin again, and as we crossed it Madala gave a kind of shuddering start. He said—‘Cold?’ smiling at her. She shivered again, in spite of herself as it were, for she’d been joking and laughing, and said—‘Someone must be walking over my grave.’ And at that he gave her such a look, and said loudly in a great rough voice—‘Rubbish! don’t talk such rubbish!’ Really, you know, the tone! And I thought to myself then as I’ve thought many times since—‘At heart the man’s a bully—that’s what the man is.’ But Madala laughed. We didn’t stay long after that. The window was a disappointment—restored. There was nothing further to see and Madala was quite right—it was chilly. The sky had clouded over and there was a wind. I thought it time to go. Madala made no objection. She had grown curiously quiet. She tired easily, you know. And he didn’t say another word. Quite time to go. I thought we might try for the earlier train, so we went off at last in a hurry. No, he didn’t come with us: we shook hands at the gate. And when I looked back a minute later he had turned away. We caught our train.” There was a little pause that Miss Howe ended. “Queer!” she said. Anita stared at them. Her hands twitched. “Oh, I’m a practical person, but—‘You’re walking on my grave,’ she said. And there or thereabouts, I suppose, she’ll lie.” “Coincidence,” said Mr. Flood quickly.