“You’ll greatly oblige me if you don’t,” he said, somewhat earnestly. “The fact is that there are quite enough ‘old wives’ fables’ hanging about this place. We don’t want to pile on to them. By the by, there’s another thing, which is perhaps a harder thing to ask. Don’t talk it over with each other—in short, don’t dwell upon it. Forget it.”
“Aren’t you rather asking us impossibilities, dear?” said Melian. “Two mere women! And our curiosity screwed up to boiling over point.”
“Why, it smacks of a magazine yarn,” declared Violet. “Never mind, Mr Mervyn, I’ll promise to remember your wishes.”
Both fancied he looked relieved, though not entirely at ease.
“That’s perfectly all right, then,” he returned. “Anybody who was such a friend to this little one when she was in straits as you were, is safe on a promise, I’ll swear.”
“Steady on, Mr Mervyn, and spare my blushes,” protested the girl, looking pleased all the same. “I did no more for Melian than she’d have done for me, and we people who have to work have to stick by each other when a pinch comes.”
“And very much to the good that is,” said Mervyn. “Knocks a lot of the essentially feminine nonsense out of women and develops the good.”
“Well said, Mr Mervyn. That’s capital, isn’t it, Melian?”
“Not bad,” was the reply, with a dash of affectionate impudence underlying it.
“Not only that, but it was owing to you entirely that I became aware—almost of the existence, I was going to say—of this child here,” he went on. “That counts on the credit side of obligation.”