The inclination came to him to pour out his burdened heart to her, but he put it aside. She was a dear loyal little soul, and it would assuage his longing to talk to her about Viola; but he could not burden her with a secret, to relieve his own burden. "I’m not really unhappy," he said, "only rather sad. There is something—perhaps I’d tell you if you were older, because we’re friends. Anyhow, being friends with you makes me less sad. I didn’t mean you to know anything." "Of course I should know," she said. "But I won’t ask you any more if you don’t want to tell me." He smiled at her affectionately. "You’ll be the first person I shall tell when I tell anybody," he said. He thought for a moment, with a frown of concentration. "I don’t think there’s any harm in our having a little secret together—one of our play secrets. If I ever have anything rather important to tell you—something that I shouldn’t want other people not to know, but I should like to tell you first—I shall come here very early in the morning and put a little note just under the window sill, in the crack, do you see?" "Oh, yes," said Jane, her face alight. "That’ll be lovely. I don’t mind your not telling me now, Harry, if you’ll do it like that, so that I shall know before anybody else. Thanks ever so much." The return of Pobbles at this moment, with his soul as emancipated as his body, changed the current of their conversation. For the rest of their time together Harry was all that he had been as a companion, and Jane exercised a more rigid control over Pobbles than the women of a family usually bring to bear upon the men. But every now and then she looked at Harry with a glance that belied the extreme masculinity of her deportment. How much did she guess, with her budding woman’s mind and her wholly woman’s sympathies? Nothing of the truth, it may be supposed; but her instincts told her that there was a change in him that would not pass away through the solution of any difficulty that might be troubling him, and that he would never be quite the same as he had been before. Others had noted it besides Jane. The Grants and Miss Minster talked it over that evening as they sat in their pretty drawing-room after dinner, to the adornment of which had been added an old walnut wood bureau and a pair of Sheffield plate candlesticks, brought home as spoil from the seaside town where they had been staying. Grant’s eyes rested on them with satisfaction many times during their conversation. The war might be entering upon a stage which promised a far longer and harder struggle than any one had hitherto anticipated, and royalties as well as other payments might be affected by it; but Grant’s royalties had come in lately to an encouraging extent and there was still good old furniture to be picked up at bargain prices if you kept your eyes open, and plenty of room in the Vicarage for more.