“That’s funny,” she said.

“Yes, isn’t it?” said Julian.

Then, seeing her thoughtful gaze, and the odd way in which she suddenly caressed the dog, he was angry with himself for having told her anything about the matter.

“Rip’s a little fool,” he said.  “Perhaps Jessie will take a dislike to you some day, Cuckoo.”

“Not she, never!” said Cuckoo, with conviction.  And, after that, she could never spoil Rip enough.

These visits and teas ought to have been pleasant functions, bright oases in the desert of Cuckoo’s life, but a cloud fell over them at the beginning and deepened as the days went by.  For Cuckoo, with her sharpness of the gamin and her quick instinct of the London streets, was perpetually watching for and noting the signs in Julian’s face, manner, or language, that fed those two passions of jealousy and of protection within her.  And, at first, she allowed Julian to see what she was doing.

One day, as they sat at the table in the middle of the room, Julian said to her: 

“I say, Cuckoo, why d’you look at me like that?”

“Like what?”

“Why d’you stare at me?  Anything wrong?”

“I wasn’t staring at you,” she asserted.  “The sun gets in my eyes if I look the other way.”

“I’ll draw the blind down,” he said.

He got up from the table and shut the afternoon sun out.  The tea-tray, the photographs, the little dogs, they two, were plunged in a greenish twilight manufactured by the sun with the assistance of the Venetian blind.

“There,” Julian said, sitting down again, “now we shall all look ghostly.”

“But if I do take a fancy to look at you, why shouldn’t I, then?” Cuckoo asked.

“I don’t mind,” he laughed.  “But you didn’t seem pleased with me, I thought.”

“Rot!”

“Oh! you were pleased, then?”

“I don’t say as I was, or wasn’t.”

“You’re rather like the Sphinx.”

“What’s that?”

“Enigmatic.”

She didn’t understand, and looked rather cross.

“I told you I wasn’t looking at you,” she exclaimed pettishly.

“Then you told a lie,” Julian said, with supreme gravity.  “Think of that, Cuckoo.”

“And what would you ever tell me but lies if I was to ask you things?” she rejoined quickly.

Julian began to see that there was something lurking in the background behind her show of temper.  He wondered what on earth it was.

“Why should I tell you lies?” he said.

“Oh! to kid me.  Men like that.  You’re just like the rest, I suppose.”

“I suppose so.”

She seemed vexed at his assent, and went on: 

“Now, aren’t you, though?”

“I say, yes.”

“Well, you usen’t to be,” she exclaimed, with actual bitterness of accent and of look.  “That’s just why I was lookin’ at you,—­for I was lookin’,—­makin’ out the difference.”