"Never even heard of him. But where did you meet him? It really is rather deceitful of you." "I always meant to tell you, only there was nothing to tell till yesterday except----" "Except everything," said Molly. "Well, tell me now." Nina jumped up and shook the bath-bun crumbs off her green muslin pinafore. "Promise not to be horrid, and I will." "I won't--I promise I won't." "Then it's--it's him--the 'stranger who might'--you know. And I really should have told you, though there wasn't anything to tell, only--don't laugh." "I'm not. Can't you see I'm not? Only what?" "Well, when I spoke to him that day in the train, I said, 'Why shouldn't we talk?' And he said, 'I--I--I--be--be--be--because I stammer so.' And he _did_. You never heard anything like it. It was awful. He took hours to get out those few words, and I didn't know where to look. And I felt such a brute because of the things we'd said about him, that I had no sense left; and I told him straight out how I'd wondered he never even said he wondered how late the train was when we were waiting for the 9.1, and I was glad it was stammering and not disagreeableness. And then I said I wasn't glad he stammered, but so sorry; and he was awfully nice about it, and I told him about that man who cured your brother Cecil of stammering, and he went to him at once: and he's almost all right now." "Good gracious!" said Molly. "Are you sure--but why didn't he get cured long ago?" "He had a mother: she stammered frightfully--after the shock of his father's death, or something, and he got into the way of it from her. And--anyway he didn't. I think it was so as not to hurt his mother's feelings, or something. I don't quite understand. And he said it didn't seem to matter when she was dead. And he's an artist. He sells his pictures too, and he teaches. He has a studio in Chelsea." "It all sounds a little thin; but if you're pleased, I'm sure I am." "I am," said Nina. "But what did he say when he asked you?" "He didn't ask me," said Nina. "But surely he said he'd loved you since the first moment he saw you?" Nina had to admit it. "Then you see I wasn't such a vulgar little donkey after all." "Yes, you were. You hadn't any business even to _think_ such things, much less say them. Why, even _I_ didn't dare to think it for--oh--for ever so long. But I'll forgive it--and if it's good it shall be a pretty little bridesmaid, it shall." "When is it to be?" asked Molly, still adrift in a sea of wonder. "Oh, quite soon, he says. He says we're only wasting time by waiting. You see we're both alone." But Molly, looking wistfully at her friend's transfigured face, perceived sadly that it was she who was alone, not they. And the thought of the red-haired Pierrot with whom she had danced nine times at the Students' Fancy Dress dance, an indiscretion hitherto her dearest memory, now offered no solid consolation. Nina went away, singing softly under her breath. Molly sighed and followed slowly.