“Wonderful!” cried Wolf, enraptured by that long-drawn familiar scream borne away upon the wind. “How did you learn to do it?”

“I fooled Bob with that; but I fooled Dick⁠—he was an Oxford gentleman⁠—with a silly owl’s-hooting which old Bob would have known at once.”

“Did you let the Oxford gentleman make love to you, Gerda?”

As soon as he had uttered the words, he felt a sense of shame that was like a pricking sore lodged under the cell-lobes in the front of his brain.

“There⁠—don’t answer!” he whispered hurriedly. “That was a gross remark of mine.”

But the half-profile which she had turned upon him showed no traces of anger.