He seemed satisfied with her tone and went on: "At that time you
were sitting beside me at the back of your father's covered car,
when we were coming home from gypsying, all the party being
squeezed in together as tight as sheep in an auction-pen. It got
darker and darker, and I said--I forget the exact words--but I put
my arm round your waist and there you let it stay till your
father, sitting in front suddenly stopped telling his story to
Farmer Bollen, to light his pipe. The flash shone into the car,
and showed us all up distinctly; my arm flew from your waist like
lightning; yet not so quickly but that some of 'em had seen, and
laughed at us. Yet your father, to our amazement, instead of
being angry, was mild as milk, and seemed quite pleased. Have you
forgot all that, or haven't you?"

She owned that she remembered it very well, now that he mentioned
the circumstances. "But, goodness! I must have been in short
frocks," she said.

"Come now, Miss Melbury, that won't do! Short frocks, indeed! You
know better, as well as I."

Grace thereupon declared that she would not argue with an old
friend she valued so highly as she valued him, saying the words
with the easy elusiveness that will be polite at all costs. It
might possibly be true, she added, that she was getting on in
girlhood when that event took place; but if it were so, then she
was virtually no less than an old woman now, so far did the time
seem removed from her present. "Do you ever look at things
philosophically instead of personally?" she asked.