It was no use, she simply could not sleep. She had tried lying all sorts of ways: with the blanket pulled over her or the blanket off; with her knees doubled up to her chin or stretched so straight that her feet nearly touched the bottom of the bed; on her back with her hands under her neck, or with her face burrowed in the pillow. Nothing helped. Going on in her she could still feel the bumps and lurches of the coach in which she had ridden most of that day. Then the log that had been smouldering in the brick fireplace burnt away in the middle, and collapsed with a crash; and the two ends, rolling together, broke into flames again. These threw shadows which ran about the ceiling, and up and down the white walls, like strange animals.

She was spending the night with Alice, and they had had a fire “just for luxury,” and had sat by it for nearly an hour before going to bed. It would be her last chance of anything like that, Alice said: in schools, you never had fires, and all lights went out to the minute. And their talk had been fearfully interesting. For Alice was in love — she was over seventeen — and had told her about it just as if she was grown up, too; looking into the fire with ever such a funny little smile, and her blue eyes quite small behind their thick, curly lashes.

“Oh, don’t you wish we could see into the future, Trix? And what it’s going to bring us?”

But though she said yes, she wasn’t sure if she did, really; she liked surprises better. Besides, all the last part of the time Alice talked, she had been screwing up her courage to put a question. But she hadn’t managed to get it out. And that was one reason why now she couldn’t sleep.

With a fresh toss, she sighed gustily. And, where her tumblings and fidgetings had failed, this sound called her companion back from the downy meadows.

“What’s the matter, child? Aren’t you asleep yet?”

“No, I simply can’t.”

Alice sat up in bed, and shook her hair back from her face. “You’re over-excited. Try a drink of water.”

“I have. I’ve drunk it all up.”

“Then you must be hungry.”

“Well, yes, I am perhaps . . . a little.”

“Come on then, let’s forage.” And throwing back the sheet, the elder girl slid her feet to the floor.

One tall white figure, one short, they opened the door and stepped out on the verandah.

Here it was almost as bright as day; for the moon hung like a round cheese in the sky, and drenched everything with its light. Barefoot they pattered, the joins in the verandah floor-boards, which had risen, cutting into their soles. Had they to pass open windows, dark holes in which people lay sleeping, Alice laid a finger on her lips. From one of these came the sound of snores — harsh snores of the chromatic kind, which went up the scale and down, over and over again, without a pause.

Turning a corner, they stepped off the verandah and took a few steps on hard pebbly ground. Inside the pantry, which was a large outhouse, there were sharp contrasts of bluish-white moonlight and black shadows.

Swiftly Alice skimmed the familiar shelves. “Here’s lemon cheese-cakes . . . and jam tarts . . . and ginger-snaps . . . and pound cake. But I can’t start you on these, or you’d be sick.” And cutting a round off a home-made loaf, she spread it thickly with dairy butter, topped by a layer of quince jelly. “There, that’s more wholesome.”

Oh, had anything ever tasted so delicious? as this slice eaten at dead of night. Perched on an empty, upturned kerosene-tin, the young girl munched and munched, holding her empty hand outspread below, lest the quivering jelly glide over the crust’s edge.

Alice took a cheese-cake and sat down on a lidded basket. “I say, DID you hear Father? Oh, Trix, wouldn’t it be positively too awful if one discovered AFTERWARDS, one had married a man who snored?”

The muncher made no answer: the indelicacy of the question stunned her: all in the dark as she was, she felt her face flame. And yet . . . was this not perhaps the very chance she had been waiting for? If Alice could say such a thing, out loud, without embarrassment. . . . Hastily squeezing down her last tit-bit — she felt it travel, over-large, the full length of her gullet — she licked her jellied fingers clean and took the plunge.

“Dallie, there’s something I . . . I want to ask you something . . . something I want to know.”

“Fire away!” said Alice, and went on nibbling at the pastry-edging that trimmed her tartlet.

“Yes. But . . . well, I don’t quite . . . I mean I . . .

“Like that, is it? Wait a tick,” and rather more rapidly than she had intended, Alice bolted her luscious circle of lemon-cheese, picked up her basket and planted it beside the tin. “Now then.”

Shut away in this outhouse, the young girl might have cried her words aloud. But leaning over till she found the shell of her friend’s ear, she deposited them safely inside. Alice, who was ticklish, gave an involuntary shudder. But as the sense of the question dawned on her, she sat up very stiff and straight, and echoed perturbed: “HOW? Oh, but Kid, I’m not sure — not at all sure — whether you ought to know. At your age!” said seventeen to thirteen.

“But I must, Dallie.”

“But why, my dear?”

“Because of something Ruth said.”

“Oh, Ruth!” said Alice scornfully. “Trust Ruth for saying the wrong thing. What was it?”

“Why, that . . . now I was growing up . . . was as good as grown up . . . I must take care, for . . . for fear. . . . But, Dallie, how can I? . . . if I don’t know?” This last question came out with a rush, and with a kind of click in the throat.

“Well, well! I always have felt sorry for you children, with no mother but only Ruth to bring you up — and she for ever prinking before her glass. But you know you’ll be perfectly safe at school, Trix. They’ll look after you, never fear!”

But there was more to, come.

It was Ella, it seemed, Ella Morrison, who was two years older than her, who’d begun it. She’d said her mother said now she mustn’t let the boys kiss her any more.

“And you have, eh?”

Trixie’s nod was so small that it had to be guessed at. Haltingly, word by word, the story came out. It had been at Christmas, at a big party, and they were playing games. And she and some others, all boys, had gone off to hide from the rest, and they’d climbed into the hay-loft, Harry MacGillivray among them; and she rather liked Harry, and he liked her, and the other boys knew it and had teased them. And then they said he wasn’t game to kiss her and dared him to. And she didn’t want him to, not a bit . . . or only a teeny weeny bit . . . and anyhow she wasn’t going to let him, there before them all. But the other boys grabbed he............