The next day at about the same time I noticed out of the corner of my eye his lordship at the doors. He came in and I knew he was looking for me; to please Miss Maitland I went along to deal with some registered letters; she left her stool and took my place. “Now,” I said to myself, “now he’ll get his head bitten off.” I was engaged with work for about five minutes, and to my surprise, when I had finished, there was Miss Maitland chatting away with him as amiably as possible. “I like to go somewhere fresh every year,” she was saying. “That’s why I went to Windermere last summer.” He said, “Not in July by any chance?” and she said, “Yes, the middle of July.” It appeared he had been there at that date; not exactly Windermere but at Bowness, and he remarked—talking to her in a very different way from the one he had adopted with me—that it would have greatly improved his holiday if he had been so fortunate as to meet her. Maity gave a sort of smile and was about to make some further remark when he took out his watch, lifted his straw hat, hurried away. “Really,” she said to me, still flushed with the conversation and looking quite young, “really a very well-spoken gentleman. Depends a good deal on how we approach them. If they think we want silly talk, why naturally enough they give it. In a general way,” concluded Maity, as though she possessed a wide and considerable experience, “in a general way men treat us as we deserve to be treated.” He came in again that afternoon to use the telephone; the box was occupied and he had to wait. We were all watching to see how he would behave this time; lo and behold if he didn’t take a big book from underneath his arm called The Horse and his Health and read carefully, taking no notice of any of us. Maity looked disappointed, and one of the girls said the great drawback about men was that they were never twice alike. That was the evening I found him waiting outside. It always rains when I leave my umbrella at home, and I couldn’t very well refuse his offer to see me into the motor omnibus, and it was certainly kind of him to suggest that I should take his gamp. I told him that the bus took me within a minute and a half of mother’s house. At the time I was in the habit of telling mother everything, and she decided—not often she praised me—that I had behaved in a ladylike manner, and mentioned it would be a good thing if every mother brought up children as she had treated me. Mother told me about one or two half-engagements that occurred before she married poor father, and gave me one piece of advice which she said was worth its weight in gold, namely, that the moment you saw a young man getting fond of you the best plan was to pretend to be indifferent and in this way to make him see that there was a lot of hard work in front of him. Mother said this three times to impress it on my memory.