"Aren't you clean yet?" she said at last.
"Aren't you clean _yet_?" she repeated, and called him by his name. He turned then quickly enough. She was leaning back in the chair laughing at him.
"Your tramp-voice might have deceived me," she said, "you did do it most awfully well! But, you see, I'd been looking at you for ages before you woke."
"Good night!" said she; "but it's not seven yet!"
"You're expecting someone," he said, pointing dramatically to the table.
"Oh, _that_!" she said; "yes--that was for--for the poor man as had seen better days! There's nothing but eggs--but I couldn't turn a dog from my door on such a night--till I'd fed it!"
It was not only eggs: it was all sorts of things from that stores box. They ate, and they talked. He told her that he had been bored in town and had sought relief in solitude. That, she told him, was her case also. He told her how he had heard her come in, and how he had hated to take either the obvious course of following her to the kitchen, saying "How do you do?" and retiring to New Romney; or the still more obvious course of sneaking away without asking her how she did. And he told her how he had decided to keep watch over her from the bicycle shed. And how the coal-black inspiration had come to him. And she laughed.
"That was much more literary than anything else you could have thought of," said she; "it was exactly like a book. And oh--you've no idea how funny you looked."
They both laughed, and there was a silence.
"Do you know," he said, "I can hardly believe that this is the first meal we've ever had alone together? It seems as though--"
"It _is_ funny," she said, smiling hurriedly at him.
He did not smile. He said: "I want you to tell me why you were so angel-good--why did you let me stay? Why did you lay the pretty table for two?"
"Because we've never been in the same mood at the same time," she said desperately; "and somehow I thought we should be this evening."
"Why--jolly--cheerful," she said, with the slightest possible hesitation.
There was another silence. Then she said in a voice that fluttered a little--
"My old governess, Miss Pettingill--you remember old Pet? Well, she's coming by the train that gets in at three. I wired to her from town. She ought to be here by now--"