'Ever since he came up to London. He got a chill in our garden when I was telling him about—' said Robina, stopping short of what she hated to mention.
'Then that's it!' said Lance, turning round with a face of one who had made a great discovery.
'It? What is the matter with him?'
'Yes,' said Lance. 'Hold your tongue, Robina; but Cherry and I thought long ago that he fancied that little Knevett himself. Then I made sure it was all a mistake; but now, depend upon it, that's what he is so cut up about!'
It carried conviction to the hearer, perhaps because it fitted in with a girl's love of romance. 'Then that's why he won't talk to me!'
'Of course!'
And then they began putting together all the tokens of inclination which their small experience and large imagination could suggest, till they had pretty well decided the point in their own belief, and had amused themselves considerably; but the anxiety came back again.
'Do people get over such things, Lance? There was Ophelia, and there was Wilfred in "Rokeby"—only she was a woman, and he was pipy. Did you ever know of anybody really and truly?'
Lance meditated, but his experience reached no farther than the surgeon's assistant at Minsterham, who was reported to be continually in love, but who did not look greatly the worse for it.
And then Robina suggested that she did not remember that either Wilfred or Ophelia had a cough.