"I should imagine that she would expect it."
Fairfax returned to his paper for another half-hour. Then he put it aside, and went out, aiming for Magda Royston's home.
It was quite true that he and she had been great chums, in the days when he was a big schoolboy from fourteen to seventeen, and she an excitable little girl from eight to eleven. He had made a pet of her, and she had made a hero of him. She had confided to him her every thought and trouble; and he in return, from laughing and pitying, had grown to be fond of the impetuous warm-hearted difficult child, whom nobody seemed to understand. He was rather curious to see what manner of being she had grown into.
Reaching the house, he decided against a formal entrance by means of the front door. It was not an hour for a stiff call; and as a boy, he had been free of the garden. He saw no reason why he should not revert to old habits.
So, following a path amid bushes which led round behind, he found himself close to the kitchen garden; and a few yards in advance of him, their backs turned in his direction, he saw two girls; one small and long-haired; the other rather tall and slight.
"Yes, dear," the latter was saying in a soft voice. "But I don't think it does to mind that sort of thing too much. It isn't worth while. Shall we go and feed the chickens?"
"She needn't be so cross, though—need she?"
"I don't think she means to be cross, darling. Perhaps she is worried about something. That often makes people seem a little cross, you know."
"I beg your pardon—" Ned interposed, with lifted cap; and they turned promptly.
"No—not Magda!" Ned instantly decided. That serene brow, those smiling eyes and happy lips, could hardly appertain to his quondam chum. Unless, indeed, the years had remade her! But this girl was surely younger; hardly more than sixteen, with smooth dark hair. Another sort altogether. Not pretty perhaps in the ordinary sense of the word—but something in the sunshine of that childlike face enchained attention.