“Rot,” said Michael. “Why, she’d be most frightfully annoyed. Besides, chaps’ uncles don’t get gone on——” Michael was going to add ‘chaps’ sisters’ governesses,’ but somehow he felt the remark was all wrong, and blushed the conclusion of the sentence. The weather grew very hot, and Miss Carthew took to sitting in a canvas chair and reading books on the beach, so that Michael and Merivale were left free to do very much as they wanted which, as Michael pointed out, was rather decent of her. “I say, Merivale,” Michael began one day, as he and his friend, arm in arm, were examining the credentials of the front on a shimmering morning, “I say, did you notice that Miss Carthew called you Alan?” “I know. She often does,” replied Merivale. “I say, Merivale,” said Michael shyly, “supposing I call you Alan and you call me Michael—only during the hols, of course,” he added hastily. “I don’t mind,” Alan agreed. “Because I suppose there couldn’t be two chaps more friends than you and me,” speculated Michael. “I like you more than I do any other chap,” said Alan simply. “So I do you,” said Michael. “And it’s rather decent just to have one great friend who you call by his Christian name.” After this Michael and Alan became very intimate and neither held a secret from the other, as through the crowds of seaside folk they threaded their way along the promenade to whatever band of minstrels had secured their joint devotion. They greatly preferred the Pierrots to the Niggers, and very soon by a week’s unbroken attendance at the three daily sessions, Michael and Alan knew the words and music of most of the repertory. Of the comic songs they liked best The Dandy Coloured Coon, although they admired almost equally a duet whose refrain was: “We are a couple of barmy chaps, hush, not a word! A little bit loose in our tiles, perhaps, hush, not a word! We’re lunatics, lunatics, everybody declares We’re a couple of fellows gone wrong in our bellows, As mad as a pair of March hares.” Gradually, however, and more especially under the influence of Japanese lanterns and a moon-splashed sea, Michael and Alan avowed openly their fondness for the more serious songs sung by the Pierrettes. The words of one song in particular were by a reiteration of passionate utterance deeply printed on their memory: “Two little girls in blue, lad, Two little girls in blue, They were sisters, we were brothers, And learnt to love the two. And one little girl in blue, lad, Who won your father’s heart, Became your mother: I married the other, And now we have drifted apart.”