It seems that when they got into the machine Una was very quiet and answered his questions only in mono-syllables, but Jerry was patient and all idea of Marcia’s party being out of his head, he drove slowly so that he would not reach the city until everything was clear and friendly between them again.  Her profile was very sober and demure, he said.  He wasn’t quite sure for a long time whether she was going to burst into anger, tears, or to laugh.  Jerry must have looked sober too and for awhile it couldn’t have been a very cheerful ride, but at last the boy saw Una looking at him slantwise and when he turned toward her she burst into the merriest kind of a laugh.

“Oh, Jerry, is it home you’re driving me to, or just a funeral?”

He gasped in relief at her sudden change of mood.  “I was just waiting,” he said quietly.  “I didn’t want to intrude, Una.”

“But you do look so like the undertaker’s assistant,” she smiled.  “You have no right to be glum.  I have.  I’m the corpse.  A corpse might laugh in sheer relief when the lid was screwed down and everything comfortable.”

“Una!  I don’t see anything so funny—­”

“My reputation!  A trifling thing,” she said coolly, “still, I value it.”

“Your reputation!  That’s absurd—­nothing could hurt you.  I don’t understand.”

“I can’t quite see yet how it all came out,” she went on thoughtfully, “how Marcia knew that I had been inside the wall.  Why, Jerry, unless she learned it recently, since I saw you in New York—­” she paused.

“No,” protested Jerry uncomfortably.  “It was last summer—­”

“But I had no name to you then—­I was merely Una—­”

“And I blurted it out, Una, the only name I knew, never thinking that you and Marcia were acquaintances.”

“Oh, I see,” and she smiled a little.  “If my name had been plain Jane or even Mary, my reputation would have been safe.”

“What rubbish, Una!  Can’t a fellow and a girl have a chat without—­”

“Yes, but the girl mustn’t get through eight-foot walls.”

“I don’t see what difference that makes.”  She must have given him a swift glance here.  But she laughed again.  “You evidently don’t realize, Jerry, that monasteries are supposed to be taboo for young girls.”

“Yes, but you didn’t know about it being a monastery,” he said seriously.

“Of course, or I shouldn’t have dared.  But that makes no difference to Marcia.  I was there.  You told her.  Don’t you know, Jerry, that it isn’t good form to tell everything you know?”

“She guessed it,” he muttered.  “It’s such a lot of talk about nothing.”  I think Jerry was getting a little warm now.  “Suppose you were in there, whose affair is it but yours and mine?”

“Everybody’s,” she shrugged.  “Everybody’s business!  That ought to be inscribed on the tombstone of every dead reputation. Hic jacet Una Habberton.  Nice girl, but she would visit monasteries.”