“A way?” “Ah!” “What sort of way?” “Oh, just a way.” “Have you got it with you now?” “Naturally I wouldn’t ’ave it with me now,” said Hash. “You keep it for special occasions, eh? Well, you haven’t yet explained how it all happened.” Mr. Todhunter coughed. “Well, it was like this, Sam: I see ’er in the garden, and I says ‘Ullo!’ and she says ‘Ullo!’ and then she come to the fence and then I come to the fence, and she says ‘Ullo!’ and I says ‘Ullo!’ and then I kiss her.” Sam gaped. “Didn’t she object?” “Object? What would she want to object for? No, indeed! It seemed to break what you might call the ice, and after that everything got kind of nice and matey. And then one thing led to another--see what I mean?” An aching sense of the injustice of things afflicted Sam. “Well, it’s very strange,” he said. “What’s strange?” “I mean, I knew a man--a fellow--who--er--kissed a girl when he had only just met her, and she was furious.” “Ah,” said Hash, leaping instantly at a plausible solution, “but then ’e was probably a chap with a face like Gawd-’elpus and hair growing out of his ears. Naturally, no one wouldn’t like ’aving someone like that kissing ’em.” Sam went upstairs to bed. Before retiring, he looked at himself in the mirror long and earnestly. He turned his head sideways so that the light shone upon his ears. He was conscious of a strange despondency. § 3 Kay lay in bed, thinking. Ever and anon a little chuckle escaped her. She was feeling curiously happy to-night. The world seemed to have become all of a sudden interesting and amusing. An odd, uncontrollable impulse urged her to sing. She would not in any case have sung for long, for she was a considerate girl, and the recollection would soon have come to her that there were people hard by who were trying to get to sleep. But, as a matter of fact, she sang only a mere bar or two, for even as she began, there came a muffled banging on the wall--a petulant banging. Hash Todhunter loved his Claire, but he was not prepared to put up with this sort of thing. Three doughty buffets he dealt the wall with the heel of a number-eleven shoe. Kay sang no more. She turned out the light and lay in the darkness, her face set. Silence fell upon San Rafael and Mon Repos. And then, from somewhere in the recesses of the latter, a strange, bansheelike wailing began. Amy was homesick. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN ACTIVITIES OF THE DOG AMY The day that followed Mr. Braddock’s dinner party dawned on a world shrouded in wet white fog. By eight o’clock, however, this had thinned to a soft, pearly veil that hung clingingly to the tree tops and lingered about the grass of the lawn in little spiderwebs of moisture. And when Kay Derrick came out into the garden, a quarter of an hour later, the September sun was already beginning to pierce the mist with hints of a wonderful day to come.