“Oh, let’s go on talking about—what you were talking about while I came.”
This was funny. The two looked at each other.
“But that wouldn’t interest you in the least, Jacky,” answered the girl. “In fact, you wouldn’t understand it.”
The sharp eyes of the youngster were full upon her face, and did not fail to notice that she changed colour slightly. When he himself had done something which he ought not to have done, and was taxed with it, he would change colour too; wherefore now he drew his own deductions. What could Hazel have been doing that came within that category?
“Never mind,” he said. “I won’t tell. No, I won’t.”
“Won’t tell?” repeated Hazel. “Won’t tell what, Jacky?”
“I won’t tell,” was all they could get out of him. Dick Selmes burst out laughing.
“Before you can ‘tell’ anything, kid, you must first of all have something to tell,” he said. “You’ve been talking a lot of bosh. Now, I think we’d better go in, for it must be getting on for dinner-time.” The two got up, and as they strolled along beneath the high quince hedge, hanging out round fruit, like the balls upon a Christmas tree, both hoped for an opportunity of at any rate satisfactorily closing their conversation. But it was not to be. That little wretch stuck to them like their shadow, nor did either want to inflame his curiosity by telling him positively to clear.
“Then it is to be conditional,” Dick said, just before they reached the door.
“That’s the word.”