"I was afraid it was only a question of time," I said with a head-shake. "Where was it?" "The rottenest luck!" she answered softly and bitterly. "Nobody but that horrid old man on his motor-bike would have thought of going there! Right up a little lane, it was, and we'd put our bicycles under the hedge, and we were sitting against one of the stooks. That dark red stuff whatever they call it--six bundles together and then another like an umbrella on the top. He barged into one of the bicycles, clumsy thing, and then came to tell us that we oughtn't to leave them there in people's way. Derry shoved me behind the stook, but it was too late. I did think he might just possibly have the decency to keep his mouth shut, but I suppose that was too much to expect. So I knew there'd be a row." "And of course Derry knew there'd be a row too?" "Yes." I sighed. "Well, the row's over now. Better let the whole thing drop. Your father's perfectly right, and you were bound to get found out sooner or later." She made no reply. But she returned to her luckless plaint a moment later. She struck the upright of the pergola softly and vindictively with her hand. "It was all that beastly bathe and Miss Oliphant's being late! We should have been all right if she'd been there at the proper time!" "I'm afraid that was my fault, Jennie. I walked rather slowly, and Miss Oliphant waited for me." "I know; of course it had nothing to do with you at all.... Then she goes and gets her things into knots, and I have to untie them, and that costume of hers is as bad as getting into a ball-dress instead of just a skin like nearly everybody else! Anyway the sea's there if she wants to bathe, and she can swim as well as I can if she does get into a current, and it isn't as if she needed a chaperone----" "Jennie, my dear, be reasonable!" I begged her. "You can hardly blame Miss Oliphant for--for what your father was told." "Oh, I'm not blaming her! But it makes you angry when stupid little accidents like those----" She swallowed. "I'm afraid stupid little accidents fill rather a large place in the world, Jennie." "I hate them having anything to do with me anyhow. And with having to take the towels home I only just caught the tram----" "What's that?" I took her up. "You _did_ catch the tram? Then it wasn't that that made you late at all. You'd have been waiting for the tram if you hadn't been waiting for Miss Oliphant." "Well, I don't care. It's all--all---" She did not say what, but hit the pergola with her hand again.