"I cannot even tell you that," said the Student. But his fingers played with the copper bangle on her wrist. And out of some dim corner of subconsciousness she seemed to hear a small voice which said "If you can't get what you want by beginning at the top you must start again at the bottom." Her father, with his learning, was the top; the bottom . . . ?
Fiona went to bed less miserable than she had expected.
CHAPTER V
THE OREAD
Fiona was out long before breakfast next morning, digging furiously in her garden. Not many minutes passed before she was rewarded by a glint of something yellow in a shovelful of earth, and there was the centipede.
"You dear creature," she said, and caught it up quickly before it could wriggle away.
"How polite we are this morning," said the centipede, swelling with conscious pride. "I suppose we want something."
Fiona's mind was far too completely taken up with her one object to notice or resent any insinuations.
"Yes, I do," she said. "You told me that if I could not get what I wanted by beginning at the top I must start again at the bottom. I can do nothing from the top this time, so I've come to you."
"Flattered, to be sure," said the centipede. "How frank we are."