After prayers she said she would go straight to bed, and she kissed Mrs. Carey.
Then she turned to Philip.
"Good gracious!" she cried. "I was just going to kiss you too."
"Why don't you?" he said.
She laughed and held out her hand.
She distinctly pressed his.
The following day there was not a cloud in the sky, and the garden was sweet and fresh after the rain.
Philip went down to the beach to bathe and when he came home ate a magnificent dinner.
They were having a tennis party at the vicarage in the afternoon and Miss Wilkinson put on her best dress.
She certainly knew how to wear her clothes, and Philip could not help noticing how elegant she looked beside the curate's wife and the doctor's married daughter.
There were two roses in her waistband. She sat in a garden chair by the side of the lawn, holding a red parasol over herself, and the light on her face was very becoming.
Philip was fond of tennis.
He served well and as he ran clumsily played close to the net: notwithstanding his club-foot he was quick, and it was difficult to get a ball past him.
He was pleased because he won all his sets.
At tea he lay down at Miss Wilkinson's feet, hot and panting.
"Flannels suit you," she said. "You look very nice this afternoon."
He blushed with delight.
"I can honestly return the compliment.
You look perfectly ravishing."
She smiled and gave him a long look with her black eyes.
After supper he insisted that she should come out.
"Haven't you had enough exercise for one day?"
"It'll be lovely in the garden tonight.
The stars are all out."
He was in high spirits.
"D'you know, Mrs. Carey has been scolding me on your account?" said Miss Wilkinson, when they were sauntering through the kitchen garden. "She says I mustn't flirt with you."
"Have you been flirting with me?
I hadn't noticed it."
"She was only joking."
"It was very unkind of you to refuse to kiss me last night."
"If you saw the look your uncle gave me when I said what I did!"
"Was that all that prevented you?"
"I prefer to kiss people without witnesses."
"There are no witnesses now."
Philip put his arm round her waist and kissed her lips.
She only laughed a little and made no attempt to withdraw.
It had come quite naturally.
Philip was very proud of himself.
He said he would, and he had.
It was the easiest thing in the world.
He wished he had done it before.
He did it again.
"Oh, you mustn't," she said.
"Why not?"
"Because I like it," she laughed.
XXXIV
Next day after dinner they took their rugs and cushions to the fountain, and their books; but they did not read.
Miss Wilkinson made herself comfortable and she opened the red sun-shade.
Philip was not at all shy now, but at first she would not let him kiss her.
"It was very wrong of me last night," she said. "I couldn't sleep, I felt I'd done so wrong."