"Have you, I wonder? You may easily have said that we thought of coming here—quite innocently, you know."
"Then I never said so at all. I thought—you know what I thought would have happened last August. Erskine, I have had absolutely nothing to do with it this time!"
"My dear, you needn't say that. I know neither you nor Tiny have had anything to do with it—so far as you are aware; but Tiny must have told him we were coming here, and this is his roundabout dodge of seeing her again. Certainly that looks as if he were in earnest."
"I always said he was."
"And as for Tiny, I don't pretend to make her out. You see, they do not come. I shouldn't be surprised at anything."
"No more should I; but I should be thankful. Even when I hid things from you, Erskine, I never pretended I shouldn't be thankful if this happened, did I? Oh, and you'll be thankful, too, when you see them happy—as we are happy!"
Holland sat for some minutes with bent head, picking lichen from granite.
"My dear girl," he said at length, and tenderly, "don't let us talk any more about it. I dare say I have taken a rotten view of it all along. I only thought—that he didn't deserve her, and that neither of them could care enough. It seems I was more or less wrong; but there is nothing further to be said until we know."
He leant over the battlements, gazing down into the toy town below. Ruth brooked his silence for a time. Then he heard her saying:
"They are a very long while. He's certainly helping her to take a photograph."