“What a liar you are! You weren’t a week ago! What’s been happening?” Then, with a scream of delight. “Don’t say—oh, my dear, don’t say you’ve had a row with him!” She tucked her arm into Laura’s and trotted her off down the platform. “Come on—come to my compartment (to myself, of course—leading lady) and tell me all about it.”
Laura, in her fright, was cruel—
“And Timothy sent messages too. Such a lot. He did so want to come.”
“You might have brought him.” Coral stared in front of her.
“But you said—you said—” began Laura, distressed. But the clang of trundled milk-cans drowned the answer. When they could hear themselves again Coral had found her compartment, and, settling herself and Laura in it, was giving her the private and professional history of every member of the company at once till the carriage doors began to slam and Laura had to jump out in a hurry.
Coral leant out of the window.
“Good-bye! You were a brick to come. Give my love to Grannie. I’ll write from Gib, tell her. And tell Justin I quite understand.”
“What?”
Coral laughed.
“Oh, the message he didn’t send, and—” she raised her voice as the train began to creak—“and the letter he didn’t write, for that matter.”