Claudia, running into the house to fetch an extra basket for the horse-chestnuts, introduced Lorraine to a few members of the family who happened to be straying about, showed her a row of pictures in the dining-room, and escorted her through the gap at the bottom of the garden into the fields at the back of the barn.
Sitting on the farther gate, whittling a stick, was a boy of seventeen, with the unmistakable Castleton features and sunlit hair.
"Hallo, Morland!" cried Claudia. "We're going to get chestnuts. Do come and help; there's a sport! This is Lorraine Forrester."
Morland would no doubt have performed the orthodox ceremony of lifting his cap, but, being bareheaded, he grinned and shook hands instead.
"Don't advise you to eat them—they're beastly!" he vouchsafed.
"We're not going to—they're for the soldiers!"
"Then I pity the poor beggars, that's all."
"They're not to be eaten, they're to be made into gas-masks. I told you all about it, Morland," declared Claudia.
"I've a shocking memory," he demurred. "But whatever they're for I'll help you get some. Here, give me this to carry," and he took Lorraine's basket and hung it over his arm.
There were plenty of chestnuts lying on the ground under the trees, and more hanging on the branches which could be dislodged by a well-aimed stone. The young people spent a profitable half-hour, and filled their handkerchiefs as well as their baskets.