“If anybody wants any more chocolates,” she said, “they must come upstairs for them.”

“She won’t trust me with them,” said Jevons. (He had a nerve.)

Viola trailed off upstairs with her dish, and Mildred and Charlie followed her.

Norah and I held watch with Jevons, who leaned back in his chair and smoked and rubbed the forefinger of his right hand—­the innocent instrument (may I say it?) of his crime—­with his table napkin, and contemplated Norah in a drowsy imperturbability.

“Did I do anything?” he said presently.

Norah put her hand on his arm and stroked it.

“No, Jimmy dear,” she said, “of course you didn’t.”

It was then that I was aware for the first time of the beauty of Norah’s face.  Norah’s, not Viola’s.  Up till then I could never see anything but Viola’s face in it, coloured wrong, so that it rather worried me to look at it, I resented the everlasting reminder of that likeness under that perverse and disconcerting difference.  If her eyes hadn’t been so blue and her cheeks so pink; if only her hair had been a little darker and if it hadn’t crinkled—­

Now, as I looked at her, I wondered how anybody could think she was like Viola.  There was only her forehead and the odd turn of her jaw and nose—­her profile, if you like, was Viola’s—­but (when she wasn’t laughing) Norah’s full face had something that Viola’s hadn’t and never would have.  I had caught it now and then and couldn’t make up my mind what it was.  Now I saw that it was a sort of wisdom, a look of soberness and goodness that I couldn’t quite account for.

Then Jevons explained it for me.

“The Kiddy’s growing up,” he said (he said it to himself).  “She’ll be twenty to-morrow.  She won’t throw wet sponges at me any more.”

That was it.  Norah was growing up.  Her soft face was setting and the expression I had noticed had come to stay.

Presently Jevons got up.  He said he had work to do.

“The Grand Attack, Furnival, the Grand Attack!”

And he left us together.

Norah looked after him.

“Poor little Jimmy,” she said.  “I don’t think he ever did a bad thing in his life.”

And then, with what seemed a daring irrelevance, “I wish Charlie wasn’t here.  I can’t think why Viola ever asked him.”

“Why shouldn’t she?”

“Because he’s bad for Jimmy.  He puts him in the wrong.”

I’m afraid I laughed a little brutally at the extravagance of this.

“Well,” she said.  “I can’t bear him to suffer.”

“You’ve got a very tender little heart, haven’t you?” I said.

“It isn’t half as tender as Viola’s.  But I’ve got more common sense.”

“Then why,” I said, “did you laugh at Jimmy just now?”

“That’s why.  Because it was the best thing you could do.  He doesn’t mind it half so much when you laugh at him.  It’s people looking down their noses, like Charlie, that he minds.  It must be awful for the poor little chap, when you come to think of it, living on the edge, never knowing when he’s going to do something that’ll make Viola’s blood run cold.”