Page:The Other House (London, William Heinemann, 1896), Volume 1.djvu/133

Rh "Oh, she's as proud of her as I am! But if she doesn't approve I'll take you upstairs. That'll be because, as you say you're just the person. I haven't the least doubt of it—but you were going to tell me why."

Jean treated it as if it were almost a secret. "Because she was born on my day."

"Your birthday?"

"My birthday—the twenty-fourth."

"Oh, I see; that's charming—that's delightful!" The circumstance had not quite all the subtlety she had beguiled him into looking for, but her amusing belief in it, which halved the date like a succulent pear, mingled oddly, to make him quickly feel that it had enough, with his growing sense that Mrs. Beever's judgment of her hair was a libel. "It's a most extraordinary coincidence—it makes a most interesting tie. Do, therefore, I beg you, whenever you keep you anniversary, keep also a little hers."

"That's just what I was thinking," said Jean. Then she added, still shy, yet suddenly almost radiant: "I shall always send her something!"

"She shall do the same to you!" This idea had a charm even for Tony, who determined on the