The parent birds with even greater pride skimmed the surface of the stream, wheeled and came back, like radiant jewels in the sunlight. Ruth watched entranced. Hardly she dared to breathe. All was very still.
And then suddenly the scream of a motor siren cleft the silence like a sword. Ruth started and turned round. When she looked again all were gone. Man, dog and birds. Wiped out as it were in a moment. The birds’ swift flight, even the dog’s, was natural enough, but how had the slower-moving human being so swiftly vanished? Ruth looked and, puzzled, looked again, but the man had disappeared as completely as the kingfishers. Then she caught sight of the dog. Saw him run across the only visible corner of the lower field, and disappear in the direction of the front gate. Towards the front gate also sped a small two-seated car, down the long hill from the main road which led to the pleasant town of Fairbridge.
Ruth felt suddenly caught up in some sequence of events outside her consciousness. Something, she knew not what, filled her also with a desire to reach the front gate. She ran across the plank which bridged the stream at that point, and, taking a short cut, arrived simultaneously with the car and the dog. And lo and behold! beside the driver, very stiff and proud, sat Selina; the strange dog had hurled himself into the driver’s arms, while, mysteriously sprung from somewhere, Sarah whirled round the entire group, barking furiously.
Ruth laughed. The events were moving with extraordinary rapidity.
“Larry will have already explained my sudden appearance,” said the driver, looking at her with a pair of humorous tired eyes over the top of the dog’s head.
“Oh, is his name Larry?” gasped Ruth, breathless from Selina’s sudden arrival in her arms after a scramble over the man and a takeoff from the side of the car; “I did so want to know. Be quiet, Selina; you are a bad dog.”
“I must explain,” said the driver gravely, “that I have not kidnapped Selina. We stopped to water the car at Mentmore, and she got in and refused to get out. She seemed to know what she wanted, so I brought her along.”
“I am ever so grateful,” said Ruth; “she has been missing since twelve o’clock, and I have been really worried.”
He nodded sympathetically.
“One never knows, does one? Larry, you rascal, let me get out. I have been worried about Larry too. I only came home two hours ago and found he had been missing since yesterday morning. May I introduce myself? My name is Roger North.”