"I know someone who is good," he said meaningly. "You have talked yourself out of breath trying to drive away the evil spirit. It's too bad! I am ashamed of my own stupidity." "I wish--" began Hilary eagerly, and stopped short as suddenly as she had begun. "You wish? Yes, what is it? Tell me, do! I want to hear--" Hilary paused for a moment and turned her head over her shoulder. A reassuring clatter of voices came to her ear. Rex, Norah, and Lettice chattering away for their lives, and Edna's soft laughter greeting each new joke. The young folks were too much taken up with their own conversation to have any attention to spare for the occupants of the box seat. She could speak without fear of being overheard. "I wish you would try not to be so cross with yourself for being lame!" Mr Rayner winced in the old, pained manner, but the next moment he began to smile. "`Cross'! That's a curious way of expressing it. How am I cross?" "Oh, always--every way! Every time it is alluded to in the most distant way, you flare up and get angry. You have snubbed me unmercifully three or four times." "I have snubbed you? I!" He seemed overcome with consternation. "Miss Hilary, what an accusation. I have never felt anything but sincerest gratitude for your sympathy--I suppose I am stupid. I ought to be hardened to it by this time, but after being so strong, so proud of my strength, it is a bitter pill to find myself handicapped like this--a burden to everybody." "You have been with us now for nearly a week, and there have only been two occasions on which you have seemed any different from another man, and each time," said Hilary, with unflinching candour, "it has been entirely your own fault! You would not let yourself be helped when it was necessary. If I were in your place, I would say to myself--`I am lame! I hate it, but whether I hate it or not, it's the truth. I am lame! and everybody knows it as well as I do. I won't pretend that I can do all that other people do, and if they want to be kind and help me, I'll let them, and if they don't offer, I'll _ask_ them! Whatever happens, I am not going to do foolish, rash things which will deceive nobody, and which may end in making me lamer than ever!' And then I'd try to think as little about it as I could, and get all the happiness that was left!" "Oh, wise young judge!" sighed Mr Rayner sadly. "How easy it is to be resigned for another person. But you are quite right; don't think that I am disputing the wisdom of what you say. I should be happier if I faced the thing once for all, and made up my mind as to what I can and cannot do. Well--Miss Carr told me her plans last night. If you come to London, you must keep me up to the mark. I shall hope to see a great deal of you, and if you find me attempting ridiculous things, such as that ladder business to-day, you must just--what is it I am supposed to have done?--`snub' me severely as a punishment."