“Not the remotest.  When I saw you standing in the hedge there, with the morning glories all about you, I first doubted my eyes, then I thought you a vision—­”

“And do you think it possible that I knew of you being here?”

“I am certain you did not.  Nobody knows.  I left no address, and I told no one where I was going.  I have not had a letter since I left London.  I have been buried alive in this heavenly little place.”

“There now, Mademoiselle,” said Margaret, with a bow.  “Are you satisfied now?”

“I was satisfied before you opened your mouth, my dear.  The possibility inevitably suggested itself, but it was stillborn.  Has not our friendship passed its seventh birthday?”

“Thank you, dear.  But the coincidence of our coming to bury ourselves in Sark, and Mr. Graeme’s coming to bury himself in Sark, was almost unbelievable.”

“Not at all,” said Miss Penny.  “If you could both trace back you would probably find the same original spring of action—­a chance word from some common friend, or some article you have both read.  Then, when circumstances loosed the spring, you both shot in the same direction.  What was it loosed your spring, Mr. Graeme?”

“Well,—­I wanted to get away out of things.  I’m busy on a book, you see, and I’d heard of Sark—­”

“Same here!” said Miss Penny—­“less the book.  We wanted to get away out of things—­and people, and we’d heard of Sark, and here we are.  Was it you suggested Sark, or I, Meg?”

“I’m sure I don’t know, dear.  You, I should think.”

“I will take all the credit of it.”

Just then Mrs. Carre, who had been down to John Philip’s for bread, turned in out of the road with a loaf under each arm.  At sight of all her guests fraternising, her face lit up with a broad smile, and Scamp, who had whirled in after her, twisted himself into hieroglyphics of delight and rent the air with his expression of it, and then launched himself at Punch and taxed him with perfidy in going off to bathe without him.

“Ah, you have med friends with the leddies,” she said to Graeme.  “Scamp!  Bad beast, be qui-et!  A couche!”

“I’m doing my best, Mrs. Carre.”

“That iss very nice.”

“Very nice, indeed!” And Miss Penny asserted afterwards that he was looking at Margaret all the time.

“I told them you were a nice quiet gentleman and wouldn’t disturb them at all,” said Mrs. Carre.

“I’ll do my very best not to.  So far the disturbance has been all on their side, but I’m standing it very well, you see.  You’ll let me show you the sights, won’t you?” he said to Miss Brandt.  “I’ve been here a month, you see, and I know it all like a book.  I’ve done nothing but moon about since I came—­”

“I thought you were busy on a book,” said Miss Penny.

“Er—­well, you see, you have to do a lot of thinking before you start writing.  I’ve been thinking,” and perhaps more than one of them had a fairly shrewd suspicion as to the line his thoughts had taken.