“Yes.  I’ll give you some tea first.”

Dickie’s lips fell apart.  He said neither yea nor nay, but watched dazedly her preparations, her concoctions, her advance upon him with a yellow teacup and a wafer.  He did not stand up to take it and he knew too late that this was a blunder.  He tingled with shame.

Sheila went back to her chair and sipped from her own cup.

“I’ve been angry with you for three months now, Dickie.”

“Yes’m,” he said meekly.

“That’s the longest I’ve ever been angry with any one in my life.  Once I hated a teacher for two weeks, and it almost killed me.  But what I felt about her was—­was weakness to the way I’ve felt about you.”

“Yes’m,” again said Dickie.  His tea was terribly hot and burnt his tongue, so that tears stood in his eyes.

“And I suppose you’ve been angry with me.”

“No, ma’am.”

Sheila was not particularly pleased with this gentle reply.  “Why, Dickie, you know you have!”

“No, ma’am.”

“Then why haven’t you spoken to me?  Why have you looked that way at me?”

“I don’t speak to folks that don’t speak to me,” said Dickie, lifting the wafer as though its extreme lightness was faintly repulsive to him.

“Well,” said Sheila bitterly, “you haven’t been alone in your attitude.  Very few people have been speaking to me.  My only loyal friends are Mr. Hudson and Amelia Plecks and Carthy and Jim.  Jim made no promises about being my guardian, but—­”

“But he is your guardian?” Dickie drawled the question slightly.  His gift of faint irony and impersonal detachment flicked Sheila’s temper as it had always flicked his father’s.

“Jim is my friend,” Sheila maintained in defiance of a still, small voice.  “He has given me a pony and has taken me riding—­”

“Yes’m, I’ve saw you—­” Dickie’s English was peculiarly fallible in moments of emotion.  Now he seemed determined to cut Sheila’s description short.  “Say, Sheila, did you send for me to tell me about this lovely friendship of yours with Jim?”

Sheila set her cup down on the window-sill.  She did not want to lose her temper with Dickie.  She brushed a wafer crumb from her knee.

“No, Dickie, I didn’t.  I sent for you because, after all, though I’ve been so angry with you, I’ve known in my heart that—­that—­you are a loyal friend and that you tell the truth.”

This admission was an effort.  Sheila’s pride suffered to the point of bringing a dim sound of tears into her voice....

Dickie did not speak.  He too put down his tea-cup and his wafer side by side on the floor near his chair.  He put his elbows on his knees and bent his head down as though he were examining his thin, locked hands.

Sheila waited for a long minute; then she said angrily, “Aren’t you glad I think that of you?”

“Yes’m.”  Dickie’s voice was indistinct.