"It's you, Olive," solemnly. "It must be that ... he really is...." Pauline's reading included more romance than mine.
"Well, he can't say I gave him any encouragement."
"Oh, of course not, darling," Pauline was sympathetic. "You couldn't ... it is so interesting. What would the girls say?"
"Pauline, if you ever ..."
"Truly, I never will.... But just think!"
But we reckoned without Alfred Allingham. Alfred was not a nice boy at that age; he had come the way of curled darlings to be a sly, tale-bearing, offensive little cad, and the next Saturday, when Pauline turned him off the croquet ground for ribaldry, he went as far as the rose border and jeered back at us.
"I know why you don't want me," he mocked; "so's I can't see Olive and Tommy Bettersworth makin' eyes." He executed a jig to the tune of
"Olive's mad and I am glad.
And I know what'll please her——"
At this juncture the wrist and hand of Tommy Bettersworth appeared over the partition fence armed with horse-chestnuts which thudded with precision on the offensive person of Alfred Allingham. Pauline and I escaped to the summer-house. I thought I was going to cry until I found I was giggling, at which I was so mortified that I did cry.
"He'll tell everybody in school," I protested.