Page:Sorrell and Son - Deeping - 1926.djvu/350

 She did not move. It was as if he had thrown an urchin's stone at her, and her very silence—like a magic shield—had turned it aside.

His sense of conflict increased, urging him on against her silence.

"Did you wring its neck?"

Her voice came low and casual.

"No—I bought a cage for it. Either it was that, or a twisted neck. Cherry is a dear, but she talks too much."

"Wrong," he said; "Cherry did not talk. I was there."

He realized that she was looking at him.

"The long arm of coincidence! Were you the man on the seat?"

"I suppose so."

"Just a man on a seat."

He felt a trembling, a quivering of all his senses, and this was new to him. Just a man on a seat! Well—very likely.

"I wasn't sure."

"No."

"I wondered what you would do—with the bird. So you have got it in a cage at Taunton Street."

She made a movement as of drawing the folds of the cloak more closely about her.

"It comes out and sits on the table. Full of cheek, quite a cockney of a cock-sparrow. They are arguing about something up there. Good-night, Narcissus."

Kit followed her in, feeling flushed about the ears and heart, and as she ascended the stairs she began to talk to him dispassionately about, poor old Maurice. "Safely canonized," as she expressed it; "with a stained-glass wife, and a holy bambino expected." Kit felt her level voice trampling upon him. She carried the conversation into the music-room and trailed it serenely under the eyes of the two by the piano.

"It is just the atmosphere for Maurice. He always looked at life as though it was just a nice church window, all Burne-Jonesy—you know. No; I don't see very much of them"

Kit felt that if she had been ten years younger he would have pulled her hair.