‘Oh, the mitre!’ he cried with a laugh, ‘I clean forgot it was there.’ He kicked it aside and stared with confusion at his companion. She looked very neat and trim in her smart town frock. He understood now why she stared so, and his cheeks flamed crimson, though it was too dark for them to be seen.
‘Meester Reevairs,’ she said at length, the desire to laugh and the desire to scold having fought themselves to a standstill, so that her face betrayed no expression at all, ‘you lead zem astray, I think.’
‘On the contrary, it is they who lead me,’ he said self-consciously. ‘In fact, they have just deprived me of my very best armour——’
‘Armour!’ she interrupted, ‘Armoire! Ah! They ’ide upstairs in the cupboard,’—and she turned to run.
‘Do not be harsh with them,’ he cried after her, ‘it is all my fault really. I am to blame, not they.’
‘’Arsh! Oh no!’ she called back to him. ‘Only, you know, if your seester find them at this hour not in bed——’
Paul lost the end of the sentence as she turned the corner of the house. He gathered up the remnants of the ceremony and followed slowly in her footsteps.
‘Now, really,’ he thought, ‘what a simple and charming woman! How her eyes twinkled! And how awfully nice her voice was!’ He flung down the rugs and wands and tea-cosy in the hall. ‘Out there,’ with a jerk in the direction of the Atlantic Ocean, ‘the whole camp would make her a Queen.’
Altogether the excitement of the last hour had been considerable. He felt that something must happen to him unless he could calm down a bit.
‘I know,’ he exclaimed aloud, ‘I’ll go and have a hot bath. There’s just time before dinner. That’ll take it out of me.’ And he went up the front stairs, singing like a boy.