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 "Tell Walter so—not me!"

"Oh no," she sighed. "The poor little lines meant well enough."

While her remark did not make sense to him, it seemed an echo of something he had once said to himself; it brought a dim recollection of pain.

"But I would tell him at a pinch," she continued. "I'm no doll that says only the ugly things for which you press a button in its back!"

"Ungainly sentence, that!"

He remembered now. It was the ghostly little gramaphone record, that had brought him a message about Dare.

"It's an ungainly subject," she retorted, absent-mindedly.

"Change it then. There's always the monkey."

"Yes, there's him. Aren't you glad?"

"Rather! . . . I don't suppose anything could be done about his legs. They're as curved as hoops. If he ever tries to make a goal he'll have to stand facing the side-lines and kick sideways like a crab."

Louise buried her nose in the monkey's fragrant dress and shook him into laughter. She was languidly wondering where her own goal was, whether it was still ahead or whether, as Walter had so discouragingly predicted, she would find it at her starting post. She was happy; but she suspected that she was happy only for the moment. The complacence with which Keble had accepted their revival of interest in each other was already stirring a little sing-