By the night decided upon, the child had worked herself up into a strong state of excitement.  Half-past six was the time settled upon, and, as she knew, it was broad daylight even then.  She felt she really dare not, could not go.  Suppose her father or Esther, some of her scornful young sisters or brothers, should be about and see the meeting, or any of the neighbours—­why, she could never survive the shame of it!  Yet go she must, or Aldith would despise her.  Besides, she had made up her mind fully to tell Andrew plainly she could not allow him to talk to her as he had been doing.  After that last terrible whisper, she felt it necessary that she should let him understand clearly that she did not approve of his conduct, and would be “his friend,” but nothing more.

But why had they not thought of deciding on an hour when it would be darker? she kept saying to herself:  there would be no danger of being seen then; she could slip out of the house without any difficulty, and run through the paddocks under cover of the kindly dusk; whereas if it was light, and she tried to creep away, at least two or three of the children would fly after her and offer generously to “come too.”

At last, too afraid to go in the light, and unwilling for Aldith to reproach her for not going at all, she did in her excitement and desperation a thing so questionable that for long after she could not think of it without horror.

“Dear Mr. Courtney,” she wrote, sitting down at her dressing-table, and scribbling away hurriedly in pencil: 

“It would be horrid going for the walk so early.  Let us go later, when it is quite dark.  It will be ever so much nicer, for no one will be able to see us.  And let us meet at the end of the paddocks where the bush grows thickly, it will be more private.  I am writing to Aldith to tell her to go at that time, she will tell Mr. Graham.

Yours sincerely,
M. Woolcot.

“P.S.—­I must ask you, please, not to kiss me.  I should be very angry indeed if you did.  I don’t like kissing at all.”

She wrote the last paragraph in a nervous hurry for she had a dread that he might fulfil his promise, if she did not forbid him as soon as they met.  Then she slipped it into an envelope and addressed it to A. Courtney, Esq., it never having even occurred to her for a moment that there was anything at all strange or unconventional in a young girl making such a point that the meeting should be in the dark.

Next she wrote a few lines of explanation to Aldith, and told her to be sure to be in the paddock by half-past eight, and she (Meg) would slip out when the children were going to bed and unlikely to notice.

And then she went out into the garden to find messengers for her two notes.  Little Flossie Courtney had been spending the afternoon with Nellie, and Meg called her back from the gate just as she was going home, and, unseen by the children, entrusted the note to her.