Coldbrooks lay among the lower Cotswolds, three miles from the station, and near the station was the village of Chelford where Nancy Averil and her mother lived. Nancy was at Coldbrooks; Aunt Monica—she was called aunt by the Chadwick children, though she and Mrs. Chadwick were first cousins—was away. So Palgrave informed him. But he did not speak again until the chill, green curve of arable hill-side was climbed and a stretch of wind-swept country lay before them. Then suddenly he volunteered: “The American girl is at Coldbrooks.”
“Oh! Is she? When did she come?” Somehow Oldmeadow had expected the later train for Miss Toner.
“Yesterday. She and Barney came down together in her car.”
“So you’ve welcomed her already,” said Oldmeadow, curious of the expression on the boy’s face. “How does she fit into Coldbrooks? Does she like you all and do you like her?”
For a moment Palgrave was silent. “You mean it makes a difference whether we do or not?” he then inquired.
“I don’t know that I meant that. Though if people come into your life it does make a difference.”
“And is she going to come into our lives?” Palgrave asked, and Oldmeadow felt pressure of some sort behind the question. “That’s what I mean. Has Barney told you? He’s said nothing to us. Not even to Mother.”
“Has Barney told me he’s going to marry her? No; he hasn’t. But it’s evident he hopes to. Perhaps it depends on whether she likes Coldbrooks and Coldbrooks likes her.”
“Oh, no, it doesn’t. It doesn’t depend on anything at all except whether she likes Barney,” said Palgrave. “She’s the sort of person who doesn’t depend on anything or anybody except herself. She cuts through circumstance like a knife through cheese. And if she’s not going to take him I wish she’d never come,” he added, frowning and turning, under the peak of his cap, his jewel-like eyes upon his companion. “It’s a case of all or nothing with a person like that. It’s too disturbing—just for a glimpse.”
Oldmeadow felt himself disconcerted. Oddly enough, for the boy was capricious and extravagant, Palgrave’s opinion had more weight with him than Barney’s. Barney, for one thing, was sexually susceptible and Palgrave was not. Though so young, Oldmeadow felt him already of a poetic temperament, passionate in mind and cold in blood.