over the word he had so deftly tossed to her—"beautiful," and Phœbe sent across the table a glance acknowledging his protection. Her cheeks were like petals. "I wonder if you're really as remarkable as the addle-pated girls of Hale's Turning make out," her nice blue eyes seemed to say.
After dinner Mrs. Ashmill proposed music. Would Mr. Minas care to play? Paul welcomed the suggestion. In this hideous plush drawing-room, many years ago, he had played for guests of Miss Ashmill driven indoors by a shower which had blasted the booths at her strawberry social.
"And you were so small," Flora archly reminded him, "that you couldn't reach the pedals."
For the first time since his return Phœbe favoured him with a directly personal allusion. "Oh," she laughed, "he was the sort of child who would simply imagine he was pedalling and somehow produce the same effect."
Paul shot her a look of delighted surprise. It was shrewd. And, for Hale's Turning, original. But for the stiff presence of the Ashmill ladies and the silly stare of Myrtle Wilcove he would have been tempted to reply, "Exactly, and if you only knew it, Phœbe, he was the sort of child who while practising in a bare playroom used to imagine that you were listening to his strains, and he played all the better for the breathless interest his image of you took in them!" In the circumstances all he dared say was a bantering:
"How well you understand small boys! Does that come from experience as a teacher, or is it a natural gift?"
Phœbe's ladylikeness had vanished. "Oh, I'm sure the ability to understand you implies something more than either, something approximating genius!" The sarcasm was veiled by the gentleness of her voice, her frank
