THE LAST ARABIAN' NIGHT 539

with a good excuse just as he had. This thought did not
immediately pluck him out of his despondency, but it
certainly made him feel several inches taller at once.
Besides, the kid had made herself look so neat and smart,
quite pretty, in fact.

"Aren't you well?" she asked him, looking at him very
earnestly.

"I'm not too bright," he admitted. "Matter of fact,
I've been a bit off colour for some time. Nothing much,
y'know. Nerves, really, that's what it is. I'm one of
those highly strung people, I am."

"You look pale, and you've got a mark on your nose,
haven't you?" She examined his face in that special
detached way that all women seem to have at times,
looking at your face as if it was not part of you, but some-
thing you were showing them, like a picture or a piece of
china. Then she nodded wisely at it. "I believe some-
thing's been up. Here, listen/1 she continued eagerly,
''something's happened, hasn't it? I mean, you're not
coming back, are you?'*

Turgis admitted sadly that he was not,

"I've been puzzling and puzzling rny head about it,"
she told him, a mounting excitement in her face and
voice. "When you didn't come this morning, Mr.
Smeeth said you must be ill, and he wasn't surprised.
And I thought so, too. And Miss Matfield didn't say
anything, and I thought she looked a bit queer, as if
she knew something. She does, too, I'm sure, though I
don't know what. She doesn't tell me much-bit stand-
offish, you know, though she's nice, she really is-but she
knows a lot, and something's been going on with her
some time, if you ask me. But, anyhow, Mr. Golspie
came in, later on, and he was talking to Mr. Dersingham,