"Miss Bellew"—she stood there in her crumpled pinafore, stiff and forlorn, tears still on her cheeks. "I'm sorry I was rude to you. I'm sorry I said you were a beast. But you hit Roddy—that finished it—and I don't like you—I never shall! But I won't call you names again. No—I don't want to be kissed ... but I'm going to be a good girl ... as long (sniff) ... as you're Father's guest."
She kept her word. Weeks later she explained the truce to Colonel Uniacke.
"We're 'honourable foes,' you see—like Coeur de Lion and Saladin."
The story had become a classic, and in the quiet garden one evening Aunt Elizabeth repeated it to the much-amused McTaggart.
"It's just like Jill"—he commented—"she's got a man's code of honour. I've never met a girl like her ... it's a character in a thousand."
Aunt Elizabeth looked up slyly—and caught the light in the blue eyes.
"I think we're both of us fond of Jill," she said, letting the words sink in. Then started briskly to talk of Mrs. Uniacke's improvement, drifting off into her pet aversion—Woman's Suffrage and Militant ways.
But her stray shot had missed the mark. The purely brotherly terms on which McTaggart met his girl friend were still untouched by sentiment.
He hardly knew how much he cared; content with a sense of friendship so totally distinct from all his other dealings with her sex.
He knew that Jill liked him. Not for a moment did he guess the presence of a deeper feeling. She supplied the want he had keenly felt in his own lack of home life. It was good to know that in one house he was always a welcome guest without the fear of intrigue or wearisome social convention.