“I am that chap Doyle,” agreed Mr. Doyle with grave dignity.
He proceeded to retail a second version of his report to The Courier, adding the chief points of the one he had already telephoned through for the next morning’s issue.
While he talked George found himself at liberty to study Monica without fear of being observed. Hitherto he had consciously avoided looking at her; now that he did so he could hardly believe that this was the same person, who, little more than two years ago, had caused him to dance before the wedding-guests. She looked completely different. The thick plaits which had been the cause of all the merriment had disappeared and her hair, fair like her sister’s, was cut short about her small head. George was not an admirer of cropped heads on women’s shoulders, but even he could not but admit that Monica’s really didn’t look half bad, considering.
Her features and figure seemed to have altered as much as her hair. The lean, disjointed look of sixteen had given place to nineteen’s curves of incipient womanhood; the curves were not pronounced but they were curves. George liked curves. Her face was curiously like Cynthia’s and curiously unlike. She had her sister’s wide forehead and straight nose, and the corners of her lips were touched with the same sense of humour, but there was an elfin look about her that was quite different from Cynthia’s air of rather amused repose. Looking more closely still, George could see that, after all, this was the person who had brought him low with a hose-pipe, but her methods, he felt, had probably developed with her curves. She would use subtler means now, but she would no doubt attain the same results. George shivered slightly.
“Footprints!” Alan’s voice broke into his thoughts. “Oo!”?
“Did the girl leave footprints, too?” Monica asked eagerly, with her sex’s immediate conversion of the general into the personal. Just over two years ago she would also have said only: “Footprints! Oo!”
Guy and Mr. Doyle exchanged glances. The glances said quite plainly: “I think we shall be able to find use for this young man.”
The talk proceeded.
In due course George rose, went out of the room, returned with drinks and dispensed them. Still the talk went on. At last Guy suggested that it was time to make a move. George did not contradict him. George was a courteous host, but there are limits. Hose-pipes are one, frogs another.
“What are you doing to-morrow, George?” Guy asked as he rose.