"George dear, please come this afternoon. I was so hoping you would.
Come whatever time suits you. I shall be happy and patient and impatient
waiting for you." ("That doesn't mean anything," he growled to himself.
"Pity she can't write more clearly.") "Of course I saw about Macaulay.
June."

At five he was on her doorstep, and a very few moments later he was
holding both her hands. They seemed somehow to have got lost in his.
Her hair was crisper and rustier than ever, swirling about in
competitive overlapping ripples. Her eyes, like a shallow Scotch brook,
were laughing at him: like transparent toffee they were or burnt sugar
or amber. "June," he said, and his voice was funny and thick, "I had
forgotten how pretty you were."

"That was just a little plot you were making with yourself to please
me," she said.

They sat happily on a sofa and talked about the wonderful way Mr. Fender
managed the Surrey bowling; they discussed the iniquities of the
Selection Committee; they decided that no woman who played the base line
game could ever be quite first class. They considered the relative
merits of Cromer and Brighton from the point of view of George's mother;
they agreed that being braced was one thing and being overbraced
another. Then June told George that he ought to marry, and George said
that he was not a marrying man, and June said that men became the worst
old maids and that a man's place was in the home and George thought that
she had got it wrong by accident.

June was perfectly happy. She loved talking to George--George who adored