“Yes, I do.”
“Willoughby Braddock told me that you once beat Bates with a walking stick.”
“Yes.”
“A large walking stick?”
“Yes.”
“Did you beat him hard?”
“Yes, as hard as ever I could lay it in.”
A little sigh of gratification escaped Kay.
“Ah!” she said.
In the course of the foregoing conversation the two had been diminishing inch by inch the gap which had separated them at its outset, so that they had come to be standing only a short distance apart; and now, as she heard those beautiful words, Kay looked up into Sam’s face with a cordial, congratulatory friendliness which caused him to quiver like a smitten blanc-mange. Then, while he was still reeling, she smiled. And it is at this point that the task of setting down the sequence of events becomes difficult for the historian.