"Because they are naughty?" Joyce was shocked to hear such radical sentiments from little Kitty.
"It always strikes me that if they are capable of great naughtiness, they are equally capable of much good. It is the force that I admire. It only wants proper direction." (Which remark proved that Kitty's mind was capable of sympathetic understanding.)
Jack and Kitty enjoyed their chance meeting so much that they missed their respective trains repeatedly. Hers on the "West bound" platform, and his on the "East," might have rumbled in and out of the station beneath them, ad infinitum, had not Kitty recollected that she was due to have tea with an aunt at Richmond, who was impervious to diplomacy and dimples and with whom no excuses concerning Fate and an Affinity at the Victoria Underground, would avail, if the kettle were over-boiled and the tea delayed. So Kitty reluctantly bade him adieu.
"You are surely not going all that long way alone?" asked Jack, whose young sisters travelled the length and breadth of London unescorted.
"Do you think it unsafe?" asked the minx, seeing through his idea and encouraging the development of possibilities.
"One hears so much about girls mysteriously disappearing from London, you know," he murmured. "I couldn't bear to hear of such a thing happening to you, so I'll come as far as Richmond station, if I may?"
"That will be charming of you! Are you sure it will not be taking you much out of your way?"
"Not at all," Jack returned with gallantry, breaking his engagement without compunction. Thereupon, he bought their tickets, and sitting beside her on the crimson velvet seats of a Richmond "Non-stop," plunged recklessly into love at first sight. The moral obligation oppressing his mind was swept away for the time being. How was it possible for it to be otherwise, when he had come into the presence of his "Ideal" in the flesh?
And Kitty, complete mistress of the situation, did not let him guess by word or look that she had been equally impressed. It was thrilling to think that this godlike person had a photograph of herself tucked away somewhere among his goods and chattels. Naughty Joyce had confessed the fact to her long ago, and she was beginning to feel that she now had him in the hollow of her hand. She had no hesitation in improving the acquaintance begun in such an unorthodox fashion; a friend of her sister's was, naturally, a friend of hers. Such being the case, she could afford to expand genially and to fan the flame her portrait had kindled, experiencing for the first time in her life an answering glow.