e
had been spilt, made no answer.

"I wish--I wish--" said Lucilla, with her back turned, a world of
regret in her eyes, "I wish I had not been so silly."

Miss Dawson looked up momentarily from her occupation. "You can put it
all right with him, you know," she said; "Captain Finch is still
hanging round."

"Here?" Lucilla cried. "He went three weeks ago!"

"Not he. Every night of the three weeks he's waited outside to walk
home with me. For the first week he went to talk about you. For a
fortnight he hasn't mentioned your name."

She ceased to rub the table, shook the cloth, folded it with nicety,
the other girl speechlessly regarding her.

"He gives me these every day," Miss Dawson went on, and dashed a hand
towards the violets in her breast. "He gave me this," she lightly
fingered the turquoise and pearl pendant. "I don't wear his ring yet,
our rules not allowing it."

She whisked off with her cloth to the screen, deposited it, reappeared.
"His leave's up in six weeks," she said. "Him and me are to be married
in a month; have a fortnight's fling, and off to India. I chuck this,
at the end of the week. They know, downstairs. I hope you'll like your
new pal when she turns up, miss."

* * * * *

Only once, during the few days that remained, did Lucilla and Miss
Dawson speak of matters not strictly concerned with teas, scones, and
girdle-cakes. It was on the last day of her service in the tea-shop
that the latter brought with her, and flung upon the mantelpiece, the
book of plays which Captain Finch, on his second visit, had deposited
there for Lucilla.

"This was meant for you," she said, "and you may as well have it. Such
stuff isn't in my line, thank goodness! and I can't make head or tail
of it. But there's a word in it I happened upon, first time I opened
the book; and it's stuck in my memory, for it happens to be holy sense,
and not tommy-rot. This is it--or something like it--

"'If you want a thing very badly, go straight for it, and--GRAB it!'"

She put her common face close to Lucilla's disdainful one as, with an
insolent emphasis, she made the quotation, then laughed as she turned
away.

"That is what you should have done--you idiot!" she said.

A CHALK-MARK ON A GATE

PART I

She was junior music-mistress at the high school for girls, and he
mathematical master at the boys' college hard by. On most afternoons of
the week it happened