That imperious butt-end gave no time to change back to her own ostentatious costume. But she did not pause even to tear off her flecked apron. After all, in face of his surrender, she could forgo arrogance of appearance. Besides, he would scarcely have time to notice anything, so swiftly must she be rid of him—however she might savour his surrender—before her grandfather could re-descend upon him. True, the call for beer showed a relaxed tension, but who could predict the effect of quaffing it upon two hot-tempered males? Ignoring the injunction, she hurried to the house-door.

“Good evening, Miss Boldero.”

She was a shade disconcerted by the formality. But a great waft of the old friendship seemed to emanate from his frank eyes and the red hair his hat-lifting uncovered. She felt herself drawn to that flame like a poor little moth: she wanted to fall upon his magnanimous morning-jacket, to sob away her sin of pride.

“Good evening, Mr. Flynt,” she murmured.

He was astonished at the sight of her, and taken aback. Mentally he had shaken her off, had ridden over her by force of will, finding occupation and exhilaration in his new and prosperous adventure; finding consolation, too, in the creamy beauty of the girl who shuttled with such suspicious frequency in the Flynt Flyer. Blanche suggested not only cream but butter, so pliant and pattable did she seem, so ready to take the impress of Will’s personality. That was very restful after the intense irritativeness of the rival carrier.

For irritativeness still remained to him Jinny’s essence—even in their alienation. Her horn-blowing still jarred, her pink muslin dress was a new provocation. He was vexed at her jog-trot apathy when their vehicles passed, an apathy that took the sting out of his speed. He was piqued that she did not complain to any one of his competition, that she took no steps of reprisal, made no objection even to Nip’s visits to him. But the central irritation in all these fleeting glimpses and encounters had been her prettiness.

Now, seeing her close for the first time since their quarrel at the cattle-market, and without her being whisked away, he had a shock. Why, she was not pretty at all: she was shabby and wan! Where was the sparkle that had haunted the depths of him? The real Jinny was, it suddenly became patent, a worn creature with shadows under her eyes and little lines on her forehead. How could he ever have imagined her attractive? Why, Blanche was like a sultana beside her.

But if the thrill he had expected to feel was replaced by this dull disappointment, another emotion did not fail to supervene. It was pity—pity not unmixed with compunction. Had it been so manly as he had thought, to come interfering with her business, violating the immemorial local tradition which assigned the carrying to a Quarles?

“Won’t you come in?” she was forced to say, seeing him silent and petrified in the porch.

“Thank you—I’ve only brought this from Miss Gentry,” he answered in awkward negation. He had come to jeer, but now he held the pot of Hair Restorer apologetically.

Jinny went from white to red. It was the supreme humiliation. Not only had he not come to make it up: he had come at the culminating moment of his triumph—sent as a carrier to her! And sent not merely with a parcel, but with the proof of her blundering!

“How kind of her!” she said, taking it, but neither her hand nor her voice was steady. “Did she send any message with it?”

“Not particularly.” He had meant to rub in Miss Gentry’s denunciations of female stupidity, to demand the other pot, but his heart failed.

“Well, thank her for her present,” said poor Jinny, struggling hard for composure. “And tell her I’ll be giving her something in return on my next round.”

He suppressed a smile; shamed from it by the pathos of her courage.

“I guess she means it for your grandfather,” he said chivalrously.

“Perhaps she does,” Jinny murmured. She turned away to close the door on herself. The beautiful black horses pawed the ground impatiently. Will shuffled and squirmed less gracefully—there seemed nothing to do but to go. Had he not refused to step inside? But he had taken her at the end of his long round, he had deposited all his passengers and packages, and he felt loth to leave her thus. A resolution was forming within him—generating so rapidly in the warmth of compunction and renewed comradeship, that possibly the germs of it had already taken root in his subconsciousness when Nip’s label brought him her sneer at his lack of a guard.

“It’s very hot,” he fenced, lingering. “Can I have a glass of water?”

She started, remembering the Gaffer’s admonition.

“Oh, won’t you have a glass of beer?”

“No, thanks, just Adam’s ale.”

Almost liquefied herself by feeling this son of Adam needed her,—even thus slightly—she moved swiftly to and fro, returning with the glass. But not so swiftly that she had not smuggled Oliver’s Depilatory and the wedding-cake into the kitchen in case he should yet come in. He took the glass, managing to touch her cold trembling fingers.

“Much obliged,” he said, after a deep draught, and this time it was her fingers that were drawn, though less consciously, to touch his round the returned glass. Then, swallowing something harder than water, “I’ve been thinking about it all, Jinny, and I’m sorry——” he blurted.

“Ha!” Her heart leapt up again.

“Sorry for you,” he explained.

“For me?” Her face hardened.

“I—I—mean,” he corrected, stammeringly, “sorry to hurt your business.”

“You haven’t hurt my business! There’s room for both! It’s a fair competition.”

“It’s very forgiving of you to say so. But I said I’d start a coach-service and I had to make my word good, hadn’t I? A man can’t say a thing and leave it empty air.”

“No.” In her new humility she was prepared to admire such solid manhood.

“But that’s no reason why we should be bad friends, is it?”

She had thought that it was; now, that attitude of hers seemed childishly foolish. Self-abasement kept her dumb.

“No reason,” he repeated, mistaking her silence for obstinacy, “why we shouldn’t shake hands.”

“Only this glass,” she flashed more happily. But it shook in her hand.

“Ah!” He sighed with satisfaction. The way to his proposition lay open. He could broach it at once.

“Much better to pull together, eh?”

“Much,” she echoed. How sweet to see the mists of folly and bitterness rolling away, to feel the weight lifting from her heart. Impulsively she held out her left hand, and as he clasped it, the warmth that came to him from its cold firmness somewhat shook his sense of Blanche’s surpassing charm. Charm, in fact, seemed—to his bewilderment—to be independent of beauty. Or was it that what radiated from Jinny’s little hand was a sense of capable comradeship, missing from that large limp palm which received but did not give? Well, but comradeship was what he wanted, what he was now going to propose. And if charm was thrown in, so much the better for the partnership.

“Aha, Son of Belial! So ye’ve come to bog and vaunt your horn here!”

It was her forgotten grandfather. Startled from her daydream, she dropped the glass and it shivered to fragments. In the dusk Daniel Quarles, wizened though he was, loomed prophetic over them in snowy beard and smock, his forehead gloomed with thunder and his ancient beaver.