“I suppose you won’t tell me your name.”
“I don’t mind,” said Frederic, with a sudden flow of honesty. He had so often been Snooks and Jones and Walker. “It’s Folyat. Fred Folyat.”
“Mine’s Lipsett, Annie Lipsett. It’s a silly name.”
It seemed such a silly name to Frederic that he could find nothing to say, and there came a dead silence between them. She was offended at last and moved away and he had almost lost sight of her in the darkness of the moor when he ran and caught her up. They passed through the posts that filled the entrance to the moor, and Frederic put his arm round her hard little waist. She stopped. He stopped and kissed her and they walked on.
There were lovers (and worse) everywhere, and as they crept slowly forward they heard sighs and silly giggles and voices murmuring. It was very dark and the clouds hung low and the wind was a little cold. They found a place to sit where through trees they could see the lights of the houses. Frederic sat a little away from her and with his cane prodded into the ground.
“I wonder where the others are,” said Annie Lipsett.
“Does it matter?”
“No.”
They were silent for a little, then Frederic remembered old Lawrie, and he pursed up his lips as the old man had done and crooned a little to himself. Then, suddenly, he asked:
“Are you happy?”