“Our row yesterday.”
Phillida had a demure twinkle, after all; but it was lost on Pocket now. “I’d forgotten all about it,” he said with superfluous candour, his ear still on the street.
“I haven’t.”
Her voice made him remember better. “I hope to goodness I didn’t hurt you?”
“Of course you didn’t.”
“But you must have thought me mad!”
There was a slight but most significant pause.
“Well, I never shall again.”
“Then you did!” he gasped. Their eyes had met sharply; both young faces were flooded with light, and it was much the same light. There was no nonsense about it, but there was indignant horror on his side, and indignant shame on hers.
“You really are at school?” she whispered, not increduously, but as one seeking assurance in so many words; and in a flash he saw what she had thought, what she had been deliberately made to think, that his beloved school was not a school at all, but an Ayslum!