badly."

"And I never knew we were going to be such friends."

"No more did I. And I don't know now how long it's going to last."

"Why shouldn't it last?"

"Because next year 'Mark' will have come home and you'll have nothing to
say to me."

"Mark won't make a scrap of difference."

"Well--if it isn't 'Mark' ... You'll grow up, Mary, and it won't amuse
you to talk to me any more. I shan't know you. You'll wear long skirts
and long hair done in the fashion."

"I shall always want to talk to you. I shall never do up my hair. I cut
it off because I couldn't be bothered with it. But I was sold. I thought
it would curl all over my head, and it didn't curl."

"It curls at the tips," Mr. Sutcliffe said. "I like it. Makes you look
like a jolly boy, instead of a dreadful, unapproachable young lady. A
little San Giovanni. A little San Giovanni."

That was his trick: caressing his own words as if he liked them.

She wondered what, deep down inside him, he was really like.

"Mr. Sutcliffe--if you'd known a girl when she was only fourteen, and you