It was strange to stand near to her again and to recognize the little things about her that had fascinated small Robert Stonehouse—­the line of her neck, the brown mole at the corner of her eye which people were always trying to rub off, the way her hair curled up from her temples in two unmistakable horns.  He had teased her about them in his shy, clumsy way.  A very subtle and sweet warmth emanated from her like a breath.  It took him back to the day when he had huddled close to her, hiccoughing with grief and anger, and yet deeply, deliriously happy because she was sorry for him.  It made him giddy with a sense of unreality, as though the present and the intervening years were only part of one of his night stories, which, after their tiresome, undeviating custom, had got tangled up in a monstrous, impossible dream.  And then a new fancy took possession of him.  He wanted to bend closer to her and say, very quietly, as though he were suggesting an order, “What about your handkerchief?  Do you want it back, Francey?”

Amidst his austerely disciplined thoughts the impulse was like a mad, freakish intruder, and it frightened him, so that he drew back sharply.

“Cider-cup,” she said.  “It’s my feast—­and I like seeing the fruit and pretending I can taste it.  And then Howard won’t get drunk and recite poetry.  Three orders, waiter.”

He took the wine card, but she held it a moment longer, as though something had suddenly attracted her attention.  Their hands had almost touched.

“Yes—­three orders will be enough.”

The company groaned, but submitted.  In reality they were too stimulated already by an invisible, exuberant spirit among them to care much.  From where he waited for Francey’s order on the threshold of the pantry Robert could see and hear them.  It was really the old days over again.  Fundamentally things outside himself did not change much.  The Brothers Banditti had grown up.  They were not nice children any more.  The innocent building-ground and nefarious plottings against unpopular authority had given place to restaurants and more subtle wickednesses.  But still Francey played her queer, elusive role among them.  She was of them—­and yet she stood a little apart, a little on one side.  Probably Howard thought himself their real leader.  They did not talk to her directly very much, nor she to them.  But all the time they were playing up to her, trying to draw her attention to themselves and make her laugh with them.  She did laugh.  It did not seem to matter to her at all that they were often crude and blatant and sometimes common in their self-expression.  She laughed from her heart.  But her laughter was a little different.  It sat by itself, an elfish thing, with a touch of seriousness about it, its arms hugging its knees, and looked beyond them all and saw how much bigger and finer the joke was than they thought it.  She was the spirit of their good humour.  They could not have done without her.