she
marked the visibly insufficient reassurance of her companion, she said
handsomely: "He won't say a word. I'll tell him not to."

Noble was dazed; no novelty, for he had been dazed almost continually
during the past seven months, since a night when dancing with Julia,
whom he had known all his life, he "noticed for the first time what she
looked like." (This was his mother's description.) Somewhere, he vaguely
recalled, he had read of the extraordinary influence possessed by
certain angelic kinds of children; he knew, too, what favourite
grandchildren can do with grandfathers. The effect upon him was
altogether base; he immediately sought by flattery to increase and
retain Florence's kindness. "I always _thought_ you seemed to know more
than most girls of your age," he began.

It was a great afternoon for Florence. From time to time she glanced
over her shoulder at the switching skirt, and increased its radius of
action, though this probably required more exercise, compared to the
extent of ground covered, than any lady member of a walking-party had
ever before taken, merely as a pedestrian. Meanwhile, she chattered on,
but found time to listen to the pleasant things said to her by her
companion; and though most of these were, in truth, rather vague, she
was won to him more than he knew. Henceforth she was to be his champion
indeed, sometimes with greater energy than he would need.

... The two were left alone together by Julia's gate when the walk (as
short as Julia dared to make it) was over.

"Well," Florence said, "I've had quite a nice time. I hope you enjoyed
yourself nicely, too, Mr. Dill." Then her eye rose to the overhanging
branch of a shade-tree near them. "Would you like to see me chin
myself?" she asked, stepping beneath the branch. "I bet I could
skin-the-cat on that limb! Would you like to see me do it?"

"I would _so_!" the flatterer enthused.

She became thoughtful, remembering that she was now a lady who took
walks with grown gentlemen. "I can, but I won't," she said. "I used to
do lots of things like that. I used to whenever I felt like it. I could
chin myself four times and Herbert only three. I was lots better than
Herbert when I used to do all kinds of things like that."

"Were you?"

She laughed as in a musing retrospect of times gone by. "I guess I used
to be a pretty queer kind of a girl in those days," she said. "Well--I
s'pose we ought to say good-bye for the present, so to speak,