He gave a happy chuckle, warming to the fray. "Now, don't stand there quarrelling, but give me your books. I'll walk home with you if you're a good girl."
Unresisted he took the strap from her, with its tightly wedged pencil case above the school primers. For her thoughts were far away, her dark brows drawn together as she went on steadily in her own defence.
"I hate being cross with you—but it's not fair play! You wouldn't like it yourself if you were me, Peter. It didn't matter last year when I was in the Juniors, but now I'm a First Senior" ... pride lay in the words ... "it's quite a different thing. We think it jolly bad form in my set, you know."
Instinctively in talking she had fallen into his step. McTaggart glanced sideways, as they turned up Portland Place, at the pretty, flushed face with its dark frame of hair under the little furry cap, pulled close about her ears.
"All right, Jill. I won't do it again. I'll admit I was tempted, being sorely in need of a pal. I'd just been through a bad half hour, you see, and was weakly yearning for a little sympathy."
She looked up quickly with affectionate concern; for he knew the royal road to her instant forgiveness.
"Bills?" He laughed aloud at the laconic suggestion. Then a shade of pity seized the man. Despite her youthful years she spoke from experience.
"Not this time." On the verge of confidence, he checked himself, moved by a sudden reticence.
"Do you think your mother would give me some lunch? Or, better still, will you come and lunch with me?"
He halted as he spoke. "There's Pagani's now, it's not far from here,—in Great Portland Street."