"Do you remember what you once made me say here, Cissy?" he said. Miss Carter turned upon him a perfectly well-bred stare of blankest ignorance.
"No," she said, "I don't remember ever being here with you before."
"Oh, come, no humbug, Cissy--you could remember very well if you wanted to," said Hugh John roughly. As he would have described it himself, "his monkey was getting up. Cissy had better look out."
He took from his ticket-pocket the piece of the crooked sixpence, which he had kept for more than three years in his schoolbox. "You don't remember that either, I suppose?" he said with grave irony.
Cissy looked at the broken coin calmly--she would have given a great deal if she had had a pincenez or a quizzing-glass to put up at that point. But she did her best without either. Strangely, however, Hugh John was not even irritated.
"No," she said at last, "it looks like half of a sixpence which somebody has stepped upon. How quaint! Did you find it, or did some one give it to you?"
They were at the stile now, and Hugh John helped Cissy over. The grown-up swing of her skirt as she tripped down was masterly. It looked so natural. On the other side they both stopped, faced about, and set their elbows on the top almost as they had done three or four years ago when--but so much had happened since then.
With even more serenity Hugh John took a small purse out of his pocket. It was exceedingly dusty, as well it might be, for he had picked it out from underneath the specially constructed grandstand at the cricket ground. He opened it quietly, in spite of the unladylike snatch which Cissy made as soon as she recognised it, dropping her youngladyish hauteur in an instant. Hugh John held the dainty purse high up out of her reach, and extracted from an inner compartment a small piece of silver.
[Illustration: "IT LOOKS LIKE HALF OF A SIXPENCE WHICH SOMEBODY HAS STEPPED UPON. HOW QUAINT!"]
"Give it back to me this moment," cried Cissy, who had lost all her reserve, and suddenly grown whole years younger. "I didn't think any one in the world could be so mean. But I might have known. Do you hear--give it back to me, Hugh John."
With the utmost deliberation he snapped the catch and handed her the purse. The bit of silver he fitted carefully to the first piece he had taken from his ticket-pocket and held them up. They were the reunited halves of the same crooked sixpence.