medium--had been tacked up. A piece of tapestry decorated the
back of the chair Sheila had chosen. In the dim light it all had an air
of quiet richness. It seemed a room transplanted to Millings from some
finer soil.

Dickie looked at the tapestry because it was the nearest he dared come to
looking at Sheila. His hands and knees shook with the terrible beating of
his heart. It was not right, thought Dickie resentfully, that any feeling
should take hold of a fellow and shake and terrify him so. He threw
himself back suddenly and folded his arms tight across his chest.

"You wanted to see me about something?" he asked.

"Yes. I'll give you some tea first."

Dickie's lips fell apart. He said neither yea nor nay, but watched
dazedly her preparations, her concoctions, her advance upon him with a
yellow teacup and a wafer. He did not stand up to take it and he knew too
late that this was a blunder. He tingled with shame.

Sheila went back to her chair and sipped from her own cup.

"I've been angry with you for three months now, Dickie."

"Yes'm," he said meekly.

"That's the longest I've ever been angry with any one in my life. Once I
hated a teacher for two weeks, and it almost killed me. But what I felt
about her was--was weakness to the way I've felt about you."

"Yes'm," again said Dickie. His tea was terribly hot and burnt his
tongue, so that tears stood in his eyes.

"And I suppose you've been angry with me."

"No, ma'am."

Sheila was not particularly pleased with this gentle reply. "Why, Dickie,
you _know_ you have!"

"No, ma'am."

"Then why haven't you spoken to me? Why have you looked that way at me?"

"I don't speak to folks that don't speak to me," said Dickie, lifting the
wafer as though its extreme lightness was faintly repulsive to him.

"Well," said Sheila bitterly, "you haven't been alone in your attitude.
Very few people have been speaking to me. My only loyal friends are Mr.
Hudson and Amelia Plecks and Carthy and Jim. Jim made no promises about
being my guardian, but--"

"But he _is_ your guardian?" Dickie drawled the question slightly. His
gift of faint irony and impersonal detachment flicked Sheila's temper as
it had always flicked his father's.

"Jim is my friend," Sheila maintained in defiance of a still, small
voice. "He has given me a pony and has taken me riding--"

"Yes'm, I've saw you--" Dickie's English was peculiarly fallible in
moments of emotion. Now he seemed determined