With that I drew myself up in my most freezing manner and walked off and left her. I've wished since that I'd thought in time to hurl that quotation from Shakespeare over my shoulder at her, but I didn't think of it till I was nearly home:
"Be thou chaste as ice, as pure as snow,
Thou shalt not escape calumny."
Those statements of Babe's were nothing but out and out calumny.
CHAPTER VII
A MODERN SIR GARETH
Yesterday morning, just to oblige me, Miss Crewes put on her Red Cross uniform and went out in the garden with me to let me take some snapshots of her. Barby came out to watch us, sitting on the stone bench under the apple tree, with her knitting. I was using my last film, posing Miss Crewes among the hollyhocks by the garden wall, when we heard a machine drive up and stop out in front. The next minute Richard came dashing around the corner of the house, bareheaded, and calling Barby in such a breathless way that I knew he had exciting news from the front.
Then he caught sight of her under the apple-tree, and came striding across the grass to her, his head up and his face fairly shining. As we walked over towards them we caught parts of his sentences, "It's Dad—all banged up and in the hospital. One of the bravest things—so proud of him—it chokes me."