His hand was already midway to his hat when the girl raised a pair of dark-fringed gray eyes and favoured him with a cold glance of non-recognition. For a second McTaggart stared, clearly taken aback. Then, with an impatient gesture, he walked straight past, recrossed the road and turned up a side street. Here he slackened his pace, and, smiling to himself, was presently rewarded by the sound of hurrying steps; but, conscious of former warnings, refrained from looking back until a breathless voice sounded in his ear.
"Peter!"
He walked on with mischievous intention,
"Peter—it's me!" He felt a touch on his arm.
"Hullo!" He wheeled round. "Why, it's Jill!—what a surprise!"
The gray-eyed girl looked up at him with a reproving frown, at his handsome, laughing face and unrepentant air.
"I wish you'd remember!" She stood there, slim and straight; as it seemed to him, a-quiver with the miracle of life. For not all the shabby clothes she wore, from the little squirrel cap which, with the tie about her throat, had seen better days, to the short tweed skirt revealing mended boots, could mar the spring-like radiance of her golden youth.
"You're a prim little school miss," said McTaggart teasingly.
"I'm not." She drew back, her head very high, the thick plait of dark hair swinging with the movement.
"You don't understand, you really are dense! I've told you heaps of times, not in Harley Street."