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110 you feel that you want to say how beautiful it is—just as much as I do?"

The girl looked at him. A scared fold in her brow warned him of the idea that had seized her.

"I'm really not mad," he said; "but it does seem so frightfully silly that we should travel all the way to—to wherever you are going, and not tell each other how good June weather is."

"Well—it is!" she owned.

He eagerly spoke: he wanted to entangle her in talk before her conventional shrinking from chance acquaintanceship should shrivel her interest past hope.

"I often think how silly people are," he said, "not to talk in railway carriages. One can't read without blinding oneself. I've seen women knit, but that's unspeakable. Many a time in frosty, foggy weather, when the South Eastern has taken two hours to get from Cannon Street to Blackheath, I've looked round the carriage and wanted to say, 'Gentlemen, seeing that we are thus delayed, let us each contribute to the general hilarity by telling a story—we might gather them into a Christmas number