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A few days later he took the Ancient History to return it to Miss Byrne. As he approached Fitch’s gate on foot, he heard Jean’s low laughter, and on passing between the lilac hedges, saw her on the front verandah with Mrs. Fitch.

“Good evening,” he said, “you both seem to be enjoying yourselves.”

“Come and sit down, Mauney. Mrs. Fitch has just been convulsing me with a story from real life,” she invited, her eyes red from laughter. “What have you been doing to-day?”

“Oh, the same old stuff,” he replied, nodding slyly towards Mrs. Fitch, busy with long, white knitting-needles. “I thought I’d stroll over and hear the latest scandal.”

Mrs. Fitch was a woman of fifty, with scrupulously tidy grey hair, a square jaw, silver spectacles and thin lips suggesting latent deviltry.

“Wal, Maun,” she said, without looking up from her rapidly-interplying ivory-points, “we ain’t accurate scandal-mongers. Not the kind that talk about folks for the sake of harmin’ them. But things do strike us peculiar like, at times, and gives our livers a healthy shakin’ up. I’ve just been telling Miss Byrne about the young Hawkins brat.” She paused and cast a sharp glance over the tops of her glasses. “You know him?” she asked.