Was anything in his life better than that moment on a Friday evening when from the corner seat of a railway carriage he watched the smoke and chimneys of London fall behind him, when through the window he saw, instead of streets and shops and houses, green fields and hedges and small scattered villages, and knew that for forty-eight hours he could forget the fretted uneasiness of his home.
He was invited during August to spend a whole week at Hogstead. Several others would be there, and there would be cricket every day.
“We can’t do without you,” Mr. Marston had said, “and what’s more, we don’t intend to.”
“Of course, we don’t,” said Muriel; “you’ve got to come!”
Naturally Roland did not need much pressing.
CHAPTER XIII
LILITH OF OLD
ROLAND made during this week the acquaintance of several members of the family who had hitherto been only names to him. There was Gerald’s uncle Arnold, a long mean-faced man, and his wife, Beatrice. Afterwards, when he looked back and considered how large a part she had played, if indirectly, in his life, and for that matter in the lives of all of them, he could not help thinking that his first sight of her had been prophetic, certainly dramatic. He had just arrived, had been met by Muriel and Mr. Marston and his brother in the hall, and Muriel had insisted on taking him away at once to see her rabbits. She had come to regard him as her special friend. Gerald’s other friends were too stiff and grown up; Roland was nearer to her own age and he did not patronize her.
“Come along,” she said, “you’ve got to see my rabbits before dinner time.”
“Will they have grown up by to-morrow?” he asked.
“Well, they won’t be any younger, will they? They are such dears,” and she had taken his hand, pulling him after her. They ran down the curving path that sloped from the house to the cricket field. “I keep them in that little shed behind the pavilion,” she said. They were certainly delightful, little brown and white balls of fur, with stupid, blinking eyes. Roland and Muriel took them out of the cage and carried them on to the terrace that ran round the field, and sat there playing with them, offering them grass and dandelions.