“But what about Harriet?” Helwise fluttered. “You must see her home first, Lancelot, and then you might take Mrs. Shaw that crochet pattern she wants for my Deep-Sea Fishermen--or was it the Night-Cap Club? Eight ch., 1 d.c. into sixth ch., back, 2 ch., 1 d.c.--perhaps I’d better write it down. Of course Harriet mustn’t go home alone!” He apologised at once. Harriet generally cycled over, and he associated her instinctively with the steel steed that turned and rent his walls. However, she brushed him aside with scant ceremony. “Rot! Of course I can. I’m used to paddling about by myself all over the place, and if you think I’ll feel any braver for having a land-lunatic mooning along beside me, grunting about turnips, you’re jolly well mistaken! It’s no use arguing, because I don’t mean to be bothered with you, so you can just crochet yourself over to Watters and have done with it.” She saluted the party with a side way jerk of her head in her best ploughboy manner, and strode off, watched by her host with annoyance, and something else, altogether different, that held him back from pursuit. Courtesy conquered, however, and he started after her, only to be stopped by Wiggie. “Let _me_!” he said, gripping his arm. “I’ll catch you up later”--and sped away on Harriet’s swinging trail. The misty air caught him by the throat as he ran. It had been stuffy in the stock-scented room, and he had no wrap of any kind. Perhaps that was why he coughed as he came up. Perhaps he knew that she strained hungry ears to his step, and wished to spare her even a momentary disappointment. In any case, he was certainly not well received. “You go back!” she snapped, turning on him. “You’re an insult--a howling insult! D’you think I want protecting by a thing that _sings_?” “I play draughts, too, you know,” he reminded her meekly, and she laughed grudgingly and moved on again, her escort with her. And as he went he talked--strange talk that was new to her, talk that set the torch of fancy flaring through the mist. Vaguely through her dogged resistance there stole a sense of protection that was of the soul. Physically, indeed, she had no fear, as she had said, but the manly stride had covered an effort to escape the clinging pain of her own heart. Around her in the dusk Wiggie wove his net of comfort, of beauty, of magic kindliness, and by the time he let her in at her own gate, the first bitterness was past. To-morrow she would remember that he sang and coughed, and looked as though he needed cod-liver-oil and malt. To-night she only knew that an angel had walked with her. * * * * *