It was hard to hear the thud of the closing door. For some time she
stood waiting, just on the inside. She thought he would come back, and
she wished him to find her there, the moment he opened the door.

But the Boy--being the Boy--did not come back.

Presently she returned to her chair, in the shade of the mulberry-tree.
She lay, with closed eyes, and lived again through the afternoon, from
the moment when the Boy had said: "Hip, hip, hurrah!" There came a
time when she turned very pale, and her lips trembled, as they had done
before.

At length she rose and paced slowly up the lawn. On her face was the
quiet calm of an irrevocable decision.

"To-morrow," she said, "I must tell the Boy about the Professor."

* * * * *

In the middle of the night, Martha, being wakeful, became haunted by
the remembrance of the smoke, as it had curled from cracks and keyholes
in the kitchen. She felt constrained to put on a wonderful pink
wrapper, and go creaking slowly down the stairs to make sure the house
was not on fire. Martha's wakefulness was partly caused by the unusual
fact of a large and hard curl-paper, behind her left ear.

Miss Charteris was also awake. She was not worried by memories of
smoke, or visions of fire; and her soft hair was completely innocent of
curl-papers. But she was considering how she should tell the boy about
the Professor; and that consideration was not conducive to calm
slumber. She heard Martha go creaking down the stairs; and, as Martha
came creaking up again, she opened her door, and confronted her.

"What are you doing, Martha?" she said.

Martha, intensely conscious of her curl-paper, was about to answer with
more than her usual respectful irritability, when the eyes of the two
women--mistress and maid--met, in the light of their respective
candles, and a sudden sense of fellowship in the cause of their night
vigil passed between them.

Martha smiled--a crooked smile, half ashamed to be seen smiling. When
she spoke, her aspirates fell away from her more completely than in the
daytime.

"'E went crawlin' about the kitchen," she said, in a muffled midnight
whisper; "all in 'is white flannels, puffin' smoke in every crack an'
'ole to kill the beetles. So kind 'e meant it; but I couldn't sleep
for wonderin' if the place was smokin' still. I 'ad to go down an'
see. 'Ow came you to be awake, Miss Christobel?"

"Things he said in the garden, Martha, h