"I'm sorry," he said.
"I—I didn't mind," said Joy, trying to make him happy, for she saw he was sorry, though she didn't know why or what for.
"You dear child!" he said. "Well, I won't do it again. I was teasing you, and I shouldn't. Come, we ought to go now."
She fell into step beside him, still mystified, but very much obliged to him in general, and they went back to the bungalow and congratulations side by side.
Meanwhile two very much surprised young people confronted two still perturbed old ones in the sunset on Phyllis' veranda.
"Now why do you suppose," Allan demanded of the world in general, "Johnny didn't break the news to us? I've rarely known a man who liked secrets less. He hasn't even come over and looked radiant with his mouth shut, as a normal human being would."
Phyllis picked up Angela and gazed over her head as she considered. She had a way of using Angela as most women do knitting or embroidery: as something to have in her hands when she wanted to think.
"It was certainly a case of very silent emotion," she said contemplatively.
"What was there a case of, Mother?" demanded Philip, reappearing, very dusty, and climbing up on all of her that Angela didn't occupy, thereby damaging fatally the spotlessness of her crinkled white silk skirt. "Is it something to eat? Did Johnny bring—"
"Johnny brought the rather surprising news that he and Joy are going to be married," his mother informed him, kissing the back of his neck. She spoke to him, as she always did, in a manner entirely unedited for children. If he didn't always know the long words, as she said, so much the better—his growing intelligence was stretched a little hunting them up.