Carmel was vexed, nevertheless, with her own carelessness. The little bracelet had been a favorite, and she hated to lose it. She missed the feel of it on her wrist. Her first thought when she woke next morning was of annoyance at the incident. As she walked down to breakfast in the coffee-room, the chauffeur was standing by the hall door. He came up at once, as if he had been expressly waiting for her, and handed her a small parcel. To her utter surprise it contained the missing bracelet.
"Johnson!" she called, for he had turned quickly away. "Johnson—oh, where did you find this? Not in the car, surely?"
"No, Miss Carmel, it was just where you thought you had left it—in the field where you had lunch. I got up early and fetched it before breakfast," replied Johnson pausing on the doorstep.
"You went all that way! How kind of you! Thank you ever so much!" exclaimed Carmel, clasping her bangle on her wrist again. "I can't tell you how pleased I am to have it!"
But Johnson, avoiding her eyes, and seeming anxious to get away from her thanks, was already out of the front door, and half-way across the courtyard to the garage.
"I wonder if English men-servants are always as shy as that?" thought Carmel. "An Italian would certainly have waited to let me say 'Thank you!'"
chapter x
A Meeting
After a morning in Wells, to look at the Cathedral and other beauty spots, the party motored on to Glastonbury, where again they called a halt to look at the Abbey and the Museum. Major Rogers was interested in the objects which had been excavated from the prehistoric lake dwellings in the neighborhood, and spent so much time poring over bronze brooches, horn weaving-combs, flint scrapers, glass rings, and fragments of decorated pottery that Sheila lost all patience.