She smiled still. "Sick people are terribly, egotistical, and I suppose
it's my conceit of having been the centre of the universe so lately that
makes me mention it." And here she laughed a little at herself, showing
a charming little peculiarity in the catch of her upper lip on her teeth.
"But this is divine--this air and this sight." She put her head out of
her side of the carryall, and drank them in with her lungs and eyes.

When she leaned back again on the seat she said, "I can't get enough of
it."

"But isn't this old rattletrap rather too rough for you?" he asked.

"Oh no," she said, visiting him with a furtive turn of her eyes. "It's
quite ideally what invalids in easy circumstances are advised to take
carriage exercise."

"Yes, it's certainly carriage exercise," Verrian admitted in the same
spirit, if it was a drolling spirit. He could not help being amused by
the situation in which they had been brought together, through the
vigorous promptitude of Miss Macroyd in making the victoria her own, and
the easy indifference of Mrs. Westangle as to how they should get to her
house. If he had been alone he might have felt the indifference as a
slight, but as it was he felt it rather a favor. If Miss Shirley was
feeling it a slight, she was too secret or too sweet to let it be known,
and he thought that was nice of her. Still, he believed he might
recognize the fact without deepening a possible hurt of hers, and he
added, with no apparent relevance, "If Mrs. Westangle was not looking for
us on this train, she will find that it is the unexpected which happens."