d it with coal.

"It's this way," he said. "Of course, dear old Derek's the finest chap
in the world."

"I know that," said Jill softly. She patted Freddie's hand with a
little gesture of gratitude. Freddie's devotion to Derek was a thing
that always touched her. She looked thoughtfully into the fire, and
her eyes seemed to glow in sympathy with the glowing coals. "There's
nobody like him!"

"But," continued Freddie, "he always has been frightfully under his
mother's thumb, you know."

Jill was conscious of a little flicker of irritation.

"Don't be absurd, Freddie. How could a man like Derek be under
anybody's thumb?"

"Well, you know what I mean!"

"I don't in the least know what you mean."

"I mean, it would be rather rotten if his mother set him against you."

Jill clenched her teeth. The quick temper which always lurked so very
little beneath the surface of her cheerfulness was stirred. She felt
suddenly chilled and miserable. She tried to tell herself that Freddie
was just an amiable blunderer who spoke without sense or reason, but
it was no use. She could not rid herself of a feeling of foreboding
and discomfort. It had been the one jarring note in the sweet melody
of her love-story, this apprehension of Derek's regarding his mother.
The Derek she loved was a strong man, with a strong man's contempt for
other people's criticism; and there had been something ignoble and
fussy in his attitude regarding Lady Underhill. She had tried to feel
that the flaw in her idol did not exist. And here was Freddie Rooke, a
man who admired Derek with all his hero-worshipping nature, pointing
it out independently. She was annoyed, and she expended her annoyance,
as women will do, upon the innocent bystander.

"Do you remember the time I turned the hose on you, Freddie," she
said, rising from the fender, "years ago, when we were children, when
you and that awful Mason boy--what was his name? Wally Mason--teased
me?" She looked at the unhappy Freddie with a hostile eye. It was his
blundering words that had spoiled everything. "I've forgotten what it
was all about, but I know that you and Wally infuriated me and I
turned the garden hose on you and soaked you both to the skin. Well,
all I want to point out is that, if you go on talking nonsense about
Derek and his mother and me, I shall ask Barker to bring me a jug of
water, and I shall empty it over you! Set him against me! You talk as
if love were a thing any third part