Part 35 (2/2)

”Oh, come, no humbug, Cissy--you could remember very well if you wanted to,” said Hugh John roughly. As he would have described it himself, ”his monkey was getting up. Cissy had better look out.”

He took from his ticket-pocket the piece of the crooked sixpence, which he had kept for more than three years in his schoolbox. ”You don't remember that either, I suppose?” he said with grave irony.

Cissy looked at the broken coin calmly--she would have given a great deal if she had had a pincenez or a quizzing-gla.s.s to put up at that point. But she did her best without either. Strangely, however, Hugh John was not even irritated.

”No,” she said at last, ”it looks like half of a sixpence which somebody has stepped upon. How quaint! Did you find it, or did some one give it to you?”

They were at the stile now, and Hugh John helped Cissy over. The grown-up swing of her skirt as she tripped down was masterly. It looked so natural. On the other side they both stopped, faced about, and set their elbows on the top almost as they had done three or four years ago when--but so much had happened since then.

With even more serenity Hugh John took a small purse out of his pocket. It was exceedingly dusty, as well it might be, for he had picked it out from underneath the specially constructed grandstand at the cricket ground. He opened it quietly, in spite of the unladylike s.n.a.t.c.h which Cissy made as soon as she recognised it, dropping her youngladyish hauteur in an instant. Hugh John held the dainty purse high up out of her reach, and extracted from an inner compartment a small piece of silver.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ”IT LOOKS LIKE HALF OF A SIXPENCE WHICH SOMEBODY HAS STEPPED UPON. HOW QUAINT!”]

”Give it back to me this moment,” cried Cissy, who had lost all her reserve, and suddenly grown whole years younger. ”I didn't think any one in the world could be so mean. But I might have known. Do you hear--give it back to me, Hugh John.”

With the utmost deliberation he snapped the catch and handed her the purse. The bit of silver he fitted carefully to the first piece he had taken from his ticket-pocket and held them up. They were the reunited halves of the same crooked sixpence.

Then he looked at Cissy with some of her own former calmness.

He even offered her the second fragment of silver, whereupon with a sudden petulant gesture she struck his hand up, and her own half of the crooked sixpence flew into the air, flashed once in the rays of the setting sun, and fell in the middle of the path.

Hugh John stood in front of her a moment silent. Then he spoke.

”Do you know, Cissy, you are a regular little fraud!”

And with that he suddenly caught the girl in his arms, kissed her once, twice, thrice--and then sprang over the stile, and down towards the river almost as swiftly as Prissy herself. The girl stood a moment speechless with surprise and indignation. Then the tears leaped to her eyes, and she stamped her foot.

”Oh, I hate you, I despise you!” she cried, putting all her injured pride and anger into the indignant ring of her voice. ”I'll never speak to you again--not as long as I live, Hugh John Smith!”

And she turned away homeward, holding her head very high in the air.

She seemed to be biting her lips to keep back the tears which threatened to overflow her cheeks. But just as she was leaving the stile, curiously enough she cast sharply over her shoulder and all round her the quick shy look of a startled fawn--and stooped to the path. The next moment the bit of silver which had sparkled there was gone, and Cissy Carter, with eyes still moist, but with the sweetest and most wistful smile playing upon her face, was tripping homeward to Oaklands to the tune of ”The Girl I left behind me,” which she liked to whistle softly when she was sure no one was listening.

And at the end of every verse she gave a little skip, as if her heart were light within her.

Girls are funny things.

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