"You know what she is when she's taken up," said Maudie.
He sighed unaware, and Maudie answered his sigh.
"It isn't a gentleman friend."
"No?" It was wonderful the indifference Ranny packed into that little word.
"Catch her!" said Maudie.
She smiled at him as he turned away, and in the middle of his own misery it struck him that poor Maudie would have to wait many years before Booty could afford to marry her, and that already her proud beauty was a little sharpened and a little dimmed by waiting.
On Monday he refrained from hanging round the door in Starker's iron shutter. But on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday he was at his post, and remained there till the door was shut almost in his face.
On Friday he was late, and he could see even in the distance the shut door.
But somebody was there, somebody was standing close up against the shutter; somebody who moved forward a step as he came, somebody who had been waiting for him. It was not Winny. It was the tall girl.
He raised his hat in answer to the movement that was her signal, and would have passed on, but she stopped him. She stood almost in front of him, so that he should not pass. And the biggest and darkest blue eyes he had ever seen arrested him with a strange bending on him of black brows.