"I’m getting like that," she said, "all bad-tempered and horrid and cross! I was horrid to you, and to Denis,—to everyone. I—I used not to be grumpy and nasty. I’m just growing that way. In books they don’t. When there’s trouble and things all go wrong, they get sweeter and sweeter. I don’t. I feel sometimes all shuddery with snappishness. I never used to feel like that—" Her voice died away in a plaintive little murmur. "Books are all rot!" he declared vigorously. "Oh, Ted, all of them?" She was laughing again, but the shadow of wistfulness still clouded her eyes. "All those with goody-goody heroines hanging around like dying ducks in a thunder-storm!" he asserted. "You don’t mind if I’m horrid and grumpy, then?" "Not a bit," he declared cheerfully. She rose. "You know you ought to have said that I never am horrid or grumpy. But no matter!" "I’ve got a conscience to think of, you know," he suggested. Outside, they found that the fog had cleared away, leaving a wet, cold world behind it. "We’ll choose our horse now," he said. "Oh, how lovely! Here comes a hansom! Poor thing, his knees are rather awful. There’s a better one—that big bay, Ted!" "Got a fare already." "Oh, I didn’t think of that." "We’ll walk along. You wouldn’t sooner have a crock from the rank, would you?" "Don’t insult me, Ted! Look—that grey! Oh, he’s a beauty!" "Put on the pace," Ted said to the man, and presently Nell was sighing with joy. "I’d love to spend a whole day in hansoms! Ted, the moral’s all wrong! I’m enjoying myself much too much. And never so much as one ’I-told-you-so’ glance from you! It’s hopelessly wrong!" As they turned into Henley Road, she held out her hand. "Shake," she said, "and—I’m not going to thank you, but—oh, Teddie, you _are_ a brick!" *CHAPTER XXVIII* Towards morning on March 17 Miss Kezia dreamed. She was not often troubled with dreams, but on this occasion her dream was long and peculiarly vivid. She dreamed that she was passing through a narrow roadway, on either side of which great rocks rose high and precipitous. On these rocks men were at work, cutting, chiselling, hammering, and every sound they made rolled and rumbled and echoed amongst the rocks, till, in her dream, Miss Kezia’s ears sang and buzzed in agony. As they worked the men sang and talked, and the rocks took up their voices, and flung them from one to another, till the noise was deafening. On she hurried, striving to get through the roadway, but it had the interminableness of dream roads, and Miss Kezia struggled in vain.