She smiled.

"Yes, Ranny. I think so."

No. There was not a trace of embarra.s.sment about her, such embarra.s.sment as she would have been bound to feel if Violet had been right. She had spoken in measured tones, as if from some very serious, secret, and sincere conviction.

She went on. "You see, Maudie won't want me any more. They're going to be married when Fred gets his holiday."

"Yes. But it isn't such a good thing for _you_, is it?"

Her deed thus exposed, presented to her in all the high folly of it, she seemed to flinch as if she herself were struck with the frightful indiscretion of her descent from Starker's.

"It's quieter. That's more what I want."

He smiled. Pressed home, she was evasive as she had ever been.

"Look here," he said, as if he were changing the subject. "_You've_ been found out."

"Found out, Ranny?"

"Yes. What have you been about this last week? I can't have you going and doing Vi's work for her, you know."

"Oh _that_! That was nothing. I just put things straight a bit, and now she's got to keep them straight."

He sighed, and reverted. "I don't like your throwing up that good job. I don't reelly."

He meant to go, leaving it there, all that she had done, unacknowledged, unexplained between them, as she would have it left. And instead of going he stood rooted to that doorstep, and to his amazement he heard himself saying, "I wish I could do something for you, Winny."

And then (he took his own breath away with the abruptness of it). "Look here--why not come and make your home with us, when Maudie's married?"

She smiled dimly, as if she hardly saw him, as if, instead of standing beside him on the doorstep, she were saying good-by to him from somewhere a long way off.

"Oh no, Ranny, that would never do."

"Why not? There's that back room there doing nothing. We don't want it.

You'd be welcome to it if it was any good."

She shook her head slowly. "It's very kind of you, but it wouldn't do.

It really wouldn't. I don't mean the room, Ranny--it's a dear little room--I mean--I mean, you know----"

Now at last she was embarra.s.sed, helpless, shaken from her defenses by the suddenness of his proposal.

"All right, Winky," he said, gently.

Then she broke down, but without self-pity, tearless, in her own fas.h.i.+on.

"Oh, Ranny, _please_ don't think I'm horrid and ungrateful."

"That's all right," he said, feebly.

He turned as if to go; but she recalled him.

"There's one thing you could do," she said.

"What's that? I'll do anything."

"Well--You can let me come over Sat.u.r.days and Sundays sometimes and look after Baby while you take Violet somewhere."

He said nothing, and she went on.

"If I were you, Ranny, I'd take her somewhere every week. I'd get her out all I could."

And he said again for the third time, very humbly:

"All right."

And as he went he called over his shoulder, "Don't forget Monday."

As if she was likely to forget it!

CHAPTER XXI

And, after all, Monday, that is to say the day at Richmond, never came.

On Monday morning when Violet got up she was seized with a slight dizziness and sickness. It pa.s.sed off. She declared that earthquakes shouldn't stop her going to Richmond, and dressed herself in defiance of all possible disturbance. Ransome took the Baby over to Wandsworth, to his mother, to be looked after. At ten o'clock he joined Winny and Maudie and Fred Booty at St. Ann's Terrace, where they had arranged that Violet was to meet them. Following on her bicycle, she would be there at ten sharp, when the five would go on to Richmond by the tram that pa.s.sed Winny's door.

Ransome had no sooner left Granville than Violet slipped out to the chemist's at the corner.

Ten o'clock struck, and the quarter and the half hour, and Violet had not appeared at St. Ann's Terrace.

Ransome proposed that the others should go on without him; he said he thought there must be something wrong, and that he had better go and see what had happened. They argued about it for a while, and finally Maudie and Fred Booty started. Winny refused flatly to go with them. She was convinced that they would meet Violet on the road to Southfields. She must have had a puncture, Winny said.

But they did not meet her.

And there was no sign of her downstairs at Granville.

"Hark! What's that?" said Winny, listening at the foot of the stair.

"Oh, Ranny!"

From the room above there came a low, half-stifled sound of sobbing and groaning.

He dashed upstairs.

In a few minutes he returned to Winny in the front sitting-room.