Somehow I found I didn’t want to ask that of anyone but herself. So I waited, and for quite a while I was not off duty at the right time again. But at last the waiting was over, and we both chanced together once more at the Well of Sulis; and I carried her pail home for her again; and that time we got as far as telling each other our names on the door-sill. ‘Now that we’ve met again, we should know each other’s names,’ I said. ‘Mine is Quin tus, what is yours?’ ‘Cordaella,’ she said, tucking in the ends of her hair that were being teased out by the wind. ‘That’s a beautiful name,’ said I. ‘It fits you.’ And suddenly she laughed at me. ‘So I have been told.’ And she ran inside and shut the door on me again. Then the day came when I had the sneezing fever. ‘Do they not give you anything for that, up at the fort?’ she said. I had a sudden picture inside my head, of myself going up on Sick Parade, to bother Manlius the fort surgeon with my snufflings, and what he would say if I did.
