Presently the silence seemed to have taken almost the character of a contest as to who should speak next, with either resolved that it should not be herself. Louie knew perfectly well what was the matter. Miss Soames might speak glancingly of Mortlake Road and offer to pay her bus fares, but really she hated Louie because of Louie's discovery in the old ledger-room on that examination day that now seemed so long ago. The girl seemed to be still in some sort of half mourning--but Louie did not want to think much of that and all that it might mean. Rather desperately, she strove to forget that she had ever had a theory about what might have driven Evie Soames into black and of what might happen when she went into colours again. She must, she told herself sharply, have a hideous mind ever to have thought these things. Indeed, she was so short with herself about it that, relinquishing the contest of silence, she again made the small immediate thing banish the large shadowy one behind. "Do you ever see Miriam Levey nowadays?" she asked suddenly. "No," Evie replied. At any rate she had not been the first to speak. "Oh? But aren't she and Mr. Jeffries at the same place now?" "Yes, I believe they are--in fact, I know they are. I suppose Kitty told you?" "Yes." "Poor Kitty! But let me see: was Miriam at the office when Kitty came to Mortlake Road? I thought it was after that she went." "I've seen Kitty more than once," said Louie, compressing her lips. The bus was slowing down opposite the Oxford. "Ah, yes, you said so. Well, remember me to her when you see her again, won't you? I get down here. I hope you'll get your parcel home all right; it's rather a large one, isn't it? Good-bye." As Evie Soames's figure was lost in the crowd that jostled in the lights of the Horse Shoe Louie did not look round. She was too angry. "Good gracious!" she exclaimed, "the insupportable little creature! Why, I never looked at one of my mother's housemaids so! _De haut en bas_--her to me! But I did catch you that day, Miss Polly Ross, and you know it!" But as the bus moved southwards again, she was trying once more to forget that white stripe in Evie Soames's dress. She did not want to think that anything had suddenly seemed to come a stride nearer. And she would now rather not have been told, what apparently was the fact, that, whether frequently or not, Evie Soames did see Mr. Jeffries.