grandmother did. He hoped not; but the four words she had as yet uttered left him in doubt.
Mrs. Le Messurier could not pronounce the "th." She had said just now, speaking of Le Lièvre, "I don't know noddin' 'bout dat, but he is very much tought of." And she laid stress on the unimportant words; she accented the wrong syllables. Owen felt it would be a pity if so kissable a mouth as Agnes Allez's were to maltreat the words it let slip in the same fashion.
He undertook to make her speak. The old lady had reached the catalogue of "Freddy's" infantile disorders, and as she coupled his name with no prefatory adjective of affection or commiseration Owen concluded that he, at least, was still among the living, was probably the boy he had seen.
He turned to the young girl: "Then that was your brother you were with just now in the garden, I suppose?"
She told him "Yes," and in reply to a further question, "Yes, he is only fifteen, and I shall be eighteen in May."
She spoke always with that little primness he had noticed in her reception of him, but her pronunciation was correct, was charming.
It occurred to him that the sunny February garden, and the companionship of the girl, would be an agreeable exchange for the starched and darkened atmosphere of the parlour and Mrs. Le Messurier's lugubrious reminiscences. He drew the conversation once, and once again, gardenwards, but without success.
To be guilty of anything so informal as to invite a stranger to step into the garden on his first visit was not to be thought of. The unconventional, the unexpected, are errors which the Islanders carefully eschew. Mrs. Le Messurier merely said: "Yes, you must come up and drink tea with us one day next week, will younot?
