This morning Petro was not in a good mood, for he had been reading in the newspaper an interview with him which he hadn’t given.  It was all about the “Start in Life Fund,” and sounded as if he were boasting, not only of the idea, but of the way in which he meant to carry it out.  Nobody likes to be made to appear a conceited bounder when his intentions are as modest as those of a hermit crab, and a hundred times more benevolent.

Therefore, when Ena came, using as an excuse a dire need of notepaper, and stopped to dawdle, lighting one of his cigarettes, Petro felt an urgent desire to be cross.  She had on some perfume which he hated, and a split skirt, and was altogether so inconvenient and uncongenial that disagreeable things to say sat on the end of his tongue.  He bit them back, however, for he knew he should be sorry afterward if he were a beast.

“You look as if you’d like to snap my head off,” said Ena, fumbling among his cigarettes.

“So I would.  But I won’t,” said he.  “It isn’t you I mind.  It’s only something that Raygan would call bally rot in the paper.”

“Something about us?” Ena was alert in a moment.

“Only about me.”

“Is that all!  You’re so silly about having things in the paper!  Almost anything’s better than nothing, I feel, as long as they don’t go raking up father’s and mother’s past.  Oh, I know you think their past’s the best thing about them.  Let’s not argue.  Does it say again that you’re engaged to Eileen?”

“No, thank heaven.  I don’t want to punch heads in her defence.”

His sister laughed, and tried to make herself comfortable by putting her feet up on the slippery whale.  The split green cloth skirt fell apart and showed a pink ankle clad in a tight-fitting film of green silk stocking.  Ena gazed at it appreciatively and liked the look of her foot in a high-heeled green suede shoe with a gold buckle.

“My private opinion is that dear little Eileen was tickled to death by the mistake.  The only thing she didn’t like about it was—­its being a mistake.”

“If you talk like that, I’ll wish the whale was Jonah’s,” said Petro.

“She does love you!” Ena got out hurriedly, fearing to be stopped, or caught up in the surprisingly strong arms of Petro, and gently set down on the wrong side of the door.  “She does!  She does!  I’ve thought so a long time.  Now I know it.  I mustn’t tell you how.”

“You oughtn’t to tell me how.  It isn’t true and it isn’t kind—­to either of us.  I hate hearing such darned nonsense about a girl who likes me as a friend.  And she’d be mad as the dickens if she could hear.”

“Perhaps she’d be mad,” Ena admitted, “because it is true.  If it weren’t she’d only laugh.  You’re a simple Simon not to see.  Everybody else with eyes does see.  And they’ll all be sorry for her if you don’t speak.”

“Any one would think I was a dog and she was a bone,” growled Petro.  “Speak, indeed!  I wish you’d mind your own business, Ena.”