“It’s a beautiful morning,” he ventured, and cursed his vapidity.
But she did not seem to find bathos in the words. “It is, indeed!” she answered with an enthusiasm which showed that she had forgotten her doubts of him. “And,” she added simply, “I have not been on a coach since I was a child!”
“Not on a coach?” he cried in astonishment.
“No. Except on the Clapham Stage. And that is not a coach like this!”
“No, perhaps it is not,” he said. And he thought of her, and—oh, Lord!—of Clapham! And yet after all there was something about her, about her grey, dove-like dress and her gentleness, which smacked of Clapham. He wondered who she was and what she was; and he was still wondering when she turned her eyes on him, and, herself serenely unconscious, sent a tiny shock through him.
“I enjoy it the more,” she said, “because I—I am not usually free in the morning.”
“Oh, yes!”
He could say no more; not another word. It was the stupidest thing in the world, but he was tongue-tied. Seeing, however, that she had turned from him and was absorbed in the view of Windsor rising stately amid its trees, he had the cleverness to steal a glance at the neat little basket which nestled at her feet. Surreptitiously he read the name on the label.
Mary Smith
Miss Sibson’s