The morning after the first dinner together, she woke up in a condition of regret that she should have been so talkative to Mrs. Wilkins the night before.  What had made her be, she wondered.  Now, of course, Mrs. Wilkins would want to grab, she would want to be inseparable; and the thought of a grabbing and an inseparableness that should last four weeks made Scrap’s spirit swoon within her.  No doubt the encouraged Mrs. Wilkins would be lurking in the top garden waiting to waylay her when she went out, and would hail her with morning cheerfulness.  How much she hated being hailed with morning cheerfulness—­or indeed, hailed at all.  She oughtn’t to have encouraged Mrs. Wilkins the night before.  Fatal to encourage.  It was bad enough not to encourage, for just sitting there and saying nothing seemed usually to involve her, but actively to encourage was suicidal.  What on earth had made her?  Now she would have to waste all the precious time, the precious, lovely time for thinking in, for getting square with herself, in shaking Mrs. Wilkins off.

With great caution and on the tips of her toes, balancing herself carefully lest the pebbles should scrunch, she stole out when she was dressed to her corner; but the garden was empty.  No shaking off was necessary.  Neither Mrs. Wilkins nor anybody else was to be seen.  She had it entirely to herself.  Except for Domenico, who presently came and hovered, watering his plants, again especially all the plants that were nearest her, no one came out at all; and when, after a long while of following up thoughts which seemed to escape her just as she had got them, and dropping off exhausted to sleep in the intervals of this chase, she felt hungry and looked at her watch and saw that it was past three, she realized that nobody had even bothered to call her in to lunch.  So that, Scrap could not but remark, if any one was shaken off it was she herself.

Well, but how delightful, and how very new.  Now she would really be able to think, uninterruptedly.  Delicious to be forgotten.

Still, she was hungry; and Mrs. Wilkins, after that excessive friendliness the night before, might at least have told her lunch was ready.  And she had really been excessively friendly—­so nice about Mellersh’s sleeping arrangements, wanting him to have the spare-room and all.  She wasn’t usually interested in arrangements, in fact she wasn’t ever interested in them; so that Scrap considered she might be said almost to have gone out of her way to be agreeable to Mrs. Wilkins.  And, in return, Mrs. Wilkins didn’t even bother whether or not she had any lunch.

Fortunately, though she was hungry, she didn’t mind missing a meal.  Life was full of meals.  They took up an enormous proportion of one’s time; and Mrs. Fisher was, she was afraid, one of those persons who at meals linger.  Twice now had she dined with Mrs. Fisher, and each time she had been difficult at the end to dislodge, lingering on slowly cracking innumerable nuts and slowly drinking a glass of wine that seemed as if it would never be finished.  Probably it would be a good thing to make a habit of missing lunch, and as it was quite easy to have tea brought out to her, and as she breakfasted in her room, only once a day would she have to sit at the dining-room table and endure the nuts.