Dear old Vernley, thought John, what a tactician he was! So leaping out, he went on to the platform just as Muriel descended from the carriage. There was one glad look of recognition and then a momentary shyness fell over them. Muriel had brought her friend whom she introduced with embarrassment. John, scarlet in the face, pretended to be frantically busy with the luggage, which filled the trap. Homewards turned, the pony trotted smartly. John sat opposite Muriel and kept looking at her furtively. She was beautiful. He wanted to touch her soft flesh, and press back the little strand of hair that fluttered over her ear and across the cheek. He noticed the full redness of her lips, and the wonderful beauty of her long eyelashes. The sight of her filled John with a kind of ecstasy bordering on intoxication. He was infinitely more in love with her than on the previous occasion. The absence of three months had glorified her in his imagination, but now he saw that reality transcended his most extravagant dreams of her physical perfection. He was fifteen and this first flush of love left him breathless with wonder. He did not want to talk; it was enough to sit near her, to hear her voice, to watch the elfin grace of her movements, to see her eyes shine, and the whiteness of her small teeth when she laughed. Had some one told him he was in love, he would have denied it. He was more a worshipper than a lover. This revelation of the woman, as he saw it in Muriel, was like sunrise on a new world; he was so lost in wonder that familiarity became impossible. He was filled with awe, in which ran fear, the fear that she could not always be there, that one morning he would get up and find her changed, an ordinary being, moving on the old earth as he had always known it. But this afternoon was his time of ecstasy--the friendly trotting of the pony, Bobbie talking away to Polly, and himself sitting there with Muriel near him while the birds sang in the hedgerows, and the sunset clouds in the west reddened behind a black fringe of trees. "Polly," said Vernley, "you may think so, but my friend is not really dumb--in fact John is a fearful talker at times." He laughed at John. "You've got the field, so I've retired," retorted John. "And I'm waiting for Muriel to tell me what she's been doing all the holidays." Muriel responded to this invitation, and, the ice broken, they were soon engrossed in each other. At the top of Carshott Hill, Vernley pulled up. He was enjoying himself with Polly, who was sensible, and to his great relief didn't giggle. "I say, Scissors, shall we go round by Carshott? It is two miles out of the way, but we shall be in time for dinner." "Oh yes," cried Muriel. "It's such a glorious afternoon."