"You dear old boy, I knew you'd come! I feel so awfully out of it, in this noise! Do make that porter understand I want to get across to Gower Street, will you? He seems confused. I don't speak a different language, do I? Just look at that glorious pair of bays; but, oh, what a shame to give them bearing-reins! Why, Ted, what a swell you are in that frock coat; you look just like the vet. at Stoke on Sundays! Oh, I'm so sorry; I forgot! I want to get to Edgware Road, you see, and I thought--" "Oh, we'll cab it, then! Nonsense! it isn't a bit cheaper, only nastier. Girls never understand these things. Hadn't you better get in, instead of examining the points of the horse? It won't stand any quieter than that, if that's your idea." The porter went off with a handsome gratuity, and Katharine settled herself in her corner of the cab, and began to examine her companion. "You've altered a little bit, Ted," she observed. "You're not so afraid of unimportant people as you used to be. I believe you would go into the post office at Stoke for your own stamps, now, instead of sending me because the girl laughed at you. Do you remember? You are such a swell, too; how you must be getting on at that place!" "Oh, I don't think so. I don't want to get on there; no decent chap would," said Ted, and Katharine changed the conversation. "The streets seem very full," she said, as they came to a block in the traffic. "Up to the brim," said Ted laconically. "I always wonder the horses don't tread on one another's toes, don't you?" She laughed in her old joyous manner, and he leaned back contentedly and looked at her. "At all events, you haven't altered much," he observed. "I've grown an inch, and my dresses are quite long now. Besides, I have put up my hair. Didn't you notice?" "I thought there was something. Turn your head round. About time you did, wasn't it? But why don't you make it stick out more? Other girls do, don't they?" Katharine had not seen any other girls, and said so; whereupon Ted supposed it was all right, if she thought it was, and added conciliatingly, that at all events her new coat was "all there." They chattered in the same trivial manner all the rest of the way; it was like the old days, when they had never thought of making up a quarrel formally, but had just resumed matters where they had been broken off. "Do you feel bad?" he asked, in his sympathetic way, when they stood at last on the well-worn doorstep of number ten, Queen's Crescent, Marylebone. "Oh, I don't know! I've got to go through with it now, haven't I? It's just like you and me not to have touched on anything really important all the way; isn't it? And I've got such a heap of things to tell you," said Katharine, in a nervous tone; and she gave a little shiver as an east wind came rushing up the street and blew dirty pieces of paper against the dingy iron railings, whence they fluttered down into the area.