The people of the Manor House have sent for me; Miss
Rutherford the younger is not awfully well, or something."

"Miss Rutherford the younger?" repeated his mother; "I did not know
there was a younger; I have never seen her, have I, Mabel?"

"I don't suppose so," Dick answered for his sister; "she has been away
in London."

"What is the matter with her?" asked Mrs. Grant. "Why do they want you
to see her?"

"I can't know that till I have seen her, can I? Last night she happened
to come into the Rendle cottage just after they had brought that poor
girl home, and the sight must have upset her; anyway she fainted. I
expect that is what Miss Rutherford is worried about."

"It is hardly polite of her not to have brought her niece to call on
me," said Mrs. Grant. "Still, if you are going there, dear, and the girl
doesn't seem well, tell them I shall be only too happy to come and fetch
her for a drive some afternoon. I daresay my carriage is more
comfortable than that ramshackle old trap of theirs."

"You are a dear to think of it," he said, stooping to kiss her good-bye.
"If you can spare Mabel this afternoon, Mother, I thought perhaps she
might come into Sevenoaks with me. I have got to attend a meeting there,
and it will be an outing for her."

"If Mabel would like to go, of course she must," Mrs. Grant agreed. "I
shall be a little lonely, and to-day is the day I am supposed to have my
hair shampooed. Not that it really matters."

"I could not go any way," Mabel put in for herself. "Mr. Jarvis is
coming to tea, Dick; he asked himself last week."

She followed her brother out to the front door.

"The day is going to be full of disagreeables for you," he said, as they
stood waiting for his bicycle to be brought round. "Mother's shampoo, I
know what that involves, and Mr. Jarvis. Nuisance the fellow is; why
can't he see that you dislike him?"

"Oh, I don't exactly," she answered, without meeting his eyes.

She hated him like poison, Dick knew. He wondered rather vaguely why
Mabel had lied to him, generally speaking they were too good friends for
that to be necessary. Then he dismissed the subject, and his thoughts
turned again to the girl he was on his way to see. He had been thinking
a great deal of Joan since he had first seen her. The startled,
child-like face, the wide frightened eyes, had impressed themselves on
his mind the night before. He had lifted her in his arms and carried her
outside; the poise of h