“Come on!” cried Jinny, catching up her hockey-stick, and marching out of the shop. She had played in a match that afternoon, and won it, three goals to one. And, re-living her victory, she had forgotten all about Luke’s recent outburst. He followed her into the High Street, and thence round the corner into the quiet road running at right angles, and ending abruptly in a high wall which shut off the railway embankment. Luke slouched past the gate of Town House.
“Hi!” shouted Jinny, who had halted at the boarding establishment next door; “have you eaten so much as to forget your own address, fathead?”
“No ... walk with me as far as the wall, Jinny?”
“Why ever?”
“Oh, I dunno; needn’t if you don’t want to.”
She yielded. The constant vituperations with which she adorned her speech, were merely used in defence, as the porcupine shoots its quills. She laboured under a fifteen-year-old delusion that rudeness is the equivalent of wit. But she was very fond of Luke. In fact, in spite of her many assertions to the contrary, her inmost heart preferred him to the redoubtable Tommy Cox.
“Well, what now?” she demanded, in softer tones than usual, as they leant up against the wall.
He looked at her; her curls were tumbled about her neck; her face was a warm blur through the humid mists of a late afternoon in December. Sebastian had been especially devoted to Letty during the last fortnight, and the prevailing atmosphere of sentiment and tenderness had infected Luke. He felt now that he wanted something more of his girl than repartee.... Suddenly he plunged forward; his lips missed her mouth, but landed somewhere in the dim hollow of her throat.
... “Jinny!”
A train thundered along the bank overhead, shook the wall, passed in a rush of light, leaving in its wake a long-drawn-out plaintive whistle....