"They--are they decent to you at Starker's?" "Of course they are. I would like," said Winny, in her grandest manner, "to see anybody trying it on with _me_." "Oh, well, I suppose it's all right if you like it. But I thought--perhaps--you didn't." "You'd no business to think." "Can't help it. Born thinkin'." "Well--it shows how much you know. I mean to enjoy life," said Winny. "And I do enjoy it." Ranny, lying on his back with his face turned up to the sky, said that that was a jolly sight more than he did; that for his part he thought it a pretty rotten show. Winny stared, for this utterance was most unlike him. "My goodness! What ever in the world's wrong with you?" Everything, he answered, gloomily, was wrong. "What an idea!" said Winny. It _was_ an idea, he said, if it was nothing else. At any rate, it was his idea. And Winny wanted to know what made him have it. "Oh, I dunno. There are things a fellow wants he hasn't got." "What sort of things?" "All sorts." "Well--don't think about them. Think," said Winny, "of the things you _have_ got." "What things?" "Why," said Winny, counting them off on her fingers, "you've got a father--and a mother--and new tires to your bike. Good boots" (she had stuck buttercups in their laces) "and a most beautiful purple tie." (She held another buttercup under his chin.) "It _is_ a tidy tie," Ranny admitted, smiling because of the buttercups. "But me hat's a bit rocky." "Quite a good hat," said Winny, looking at it with her little head on one side. "And you've won the silver cup for the Wandsworth Hurdle Race. What more do you want?" "It's what a fellow hasn't got he wants." "Well, what haven't you got, then?" "Prospects," said Ranny. "I've no prospects. Not for years and years." "No," said Winny, with decision. "And didn't ought to have. Not at your age." She had no sympathy for him and no understanding of his case. Ranny sat up, stared about him, and sighed profoundly. And because he could think of nothing else to say he suggested that it was time to go. Winny sprang to her feet with a swiftness that implied that if it was to go he wanted, she was more than ready to oblige him. As she mounted her bicycle, the shut firmness of her mouth, the straightness of her back, and the grip of her little hands on the handle bars were eloquent of her determination to be gone. And her face, he noticed, was pinker than he ever remembered having seen it. And he wondered what it was he had said. CHAPTER VII