If you should need
me," he said, and produced his card. "I'll write and tell you what
happens--er--when we get there."

She thanked and passed him coldly, for she felt that he had broken faith
with her.

Outside the gate George Halkett sat in his high dog-cart and idly laid
the whip across the horse's back. John stood and talked to him with the
courtesy exacted by the circumstances, but George's eye caught the
sunlight on Miriam's hair, and sullenly he bowed to her. She smiled
back, putting the venom and swiftness of her emotion into that salute.
She watched until his head slowly turned towards her again, and then it
happened that she was looking far beyond the chimneys of Brent Farm.

"Now he's angry," she told herself, and pleasure went like a creeping
thing down her back. She could see by the stubborn set of his head that
he would not risk another glance.

Behind her, on the step, Notya was still talking to Helen.

Uncle Alfred stopped swinging his eyeglass and clicked the gold case of
his watch. "We must be going," he said, and Miriam's heart cried out,
"Yes; go, go, go!"

Lightly and strangely, Mildred Caniper kissed the cheeks of Miriam and
Helen and shook John's hand, before she took her place beside George
Halkett, with a word of thanks. Uncle Alfred stiffly climbed to his
perch at the back, and, incommoded by his sister's box, he sat there,
clasping the handrail. A few shufflings of his feet and rearrangements
of his body told of his discomfort, and on his face there was the
knowledge that this was but the prelude to worse things. Mildred Caniper
did not look back nor wave a hand, but Uncle Alfred's unfortunate
position necessitated a direct view of his young relatives. Three times
he lifted his hat, and at last the cart swung into the road and he need
look no more.

Miriam fanned herself with her little apron. "Now, how long can we count
on in the most unfavourable circumstances?" she asked, but, to her
astonishment, the others walked off without a word. She set her teeth in
her under-lip and stared through tears at the lessening cart. She began
to sing so that she might keep down the sobs that hurt her throat, and
the words told of her satisfaction that Uncle Alfred was perched
uncomfortably on the back seat of the cart.

"And I wish he would fall off," she sang. "Oh, dear, oh, dear, oh,
dear!"

CHAPTER IX

The three did not meet again until the sun had set and the brilliant sky
had take