“Now you get up off the cold floor, or you'll be starting rheumatism next, and you stop laughing and being so silly.”

“Why shouldn't I laugh?” he asked, pinning her with his elbows, and advancing his face to hers. “What's there to cry at? Kiss me here.” He indicated the spot where a kiss would be welcome.

He was a boy after all. When it came to the point, it was she who remembered the past, she into whose soul the iron had entered, she who knew whose room this had been last year. It endeared him to her strangely that he should be sometimes wrong.

“Any letters?” he asked.

“Just a line from Freddy.”

“Now kiss me here; then here.”