Enid Crofton had a very practical side to her character, and she was the last person to risk the wasting of good sugar and good fruit through the stupidity of an inexperienced cook.
While Jack was still there one of her new acquaintances had come in for a moment, for she had already made herself well liked in the neighbourhood, and after the visitor had gone, Jack, exclaiming angrily that they were never left in peace together, had begged her to go for a walk with him that afternoon.

This she had consented to do, after discovering that Godfrey Radmore had gone up to London for the day.
And then, during their walk, Jack had suddenly made her a pompous offer of marriage! No wonder she smiled mischievously to herself, when pacing slowly up and down the path between a row of espaliered apple trees.
She told herself that in a sense it had been her fault.

They were sitting on a fallen tree trunk, in a lonely little wood, Jack, as he seldom was, tongue-tied and dull.

Piqued, she had twitted him on his silence.

And then, all at once, he had turned and, seizing her roughly, had kissed her with the pent-up passion of a man in love who till now has never kissed a woman.
Pacing slowly in her dark garden, Enid Crofton's pulse quickened at the recollection of those maladroit, hungry kisses.