Page:That Royle Girl (Balmer).pdf/146

 "What?"

"I didn't know what this was."

"When you stuck me here, you mean."

"Oh, Ket, I'm so sorry!"

"Swell time to be sorry. Anyway, what's your trouble? You ain't in it."

"Ket, you mustn't—"

"Yea," growled Ket, remembering Elmen's admonitions. "We mustn't scrap."

"We mustn't, Ket!" she pleaded and her voice through the screen softened him.

"I know you did your best, kid. Didn't I tell Elmen all right to send you along?"

"Oh!" she breathed, relaxing her clutch of the screen as she comprehended that the reason Elmen had forbidden her to visit Ket was that he had not wanted to see her.

"Kid," whispered Ket, gazing through at her, "that was some kiss!"

"What?" she said, meeting his gray eyes in wonder at the way his bitter rebuke of her could give way, so suddenly, to this desire for her which he could satisfy only with his eyes and by summoning his memory of his hot embrace and his ravish of her lips when he had seized her at the door on the night the police arrested him.

Through the holes in the screen, he saw her face plainly enough to be sure that she remembered and he strengthened his memory to himself by repeating, "Some kiss, kid."

"Yes," she replied, but did not summon within her the sensation of his embrace. She stared at him, thinking, "He's still Ket." And she let go of the screen, feeling more cheerful; she took a more general view through the holes and, peering into the bull-pen, now she noticed a shape which resembled a piano.