"How informative you are, Jim!" said Pamela lazily. But Judith unexpectedly showed interest in Australia, and asked for exact details of the behaviour of the thermometer in that Dependency, which was given to her.
"Oh, it's much too hot to listen to all this," said Pamela, springing up from her low chair with no appearance of any essential lack of energy, in spite of the heat. "Let's go for a stroll in the wood."
This was said to Fred Comfrey, who responded with alacrity. His eyes had repeatedly rested upon Pamela, across the luncheon table, where she had talked and laughed with the gay freedom that was hers when she was feeling what Norman would have called good and happy, and during the game in which her light movements had been partnered with Horsham's responsible but slow-moving efforts, to their ultimate defeat. Horsham also looked at her as she rose, as if he would like to follow her; but his explanations to Judith were in full flood, and had to be carried to a conclusion. Pamela and Fred moved off together, and his eyes followed them until they were lost among the trees, though there was no faltering in his firm dealings with degrees Fahrenheit.
"Jim's a dear old thing," said Pamela, when they were out of hearing, "but the idea sometimes crosses my mind that he's just a little bit of a bore. I hate to think it of him, so the best thing is to run away when he begins to show signs of it. We needn't run very far. There's a seat just out of hearing of them."
It was the seat in which she and Norman had been surprised by Fred and Hugo years before, from which had followed that quarrel that she had never heard about. She had even forgotten the disturbance that led up to it, but it was fresh enough in Fred's mind, and impelled him to ask with some awkwardness. "What sort of a fellow has Norman grown into? I didn't see him when he was here last week."
This brought her to a recollection of the hostility between them, and she answered a little stiffly: "He's just as much of a dear as ever." She had shared Norman's dislike of Fred in her childhood. She thought him improved, and wanted him to have a new chance with all of them. But she was on Norman's side—always, if it was a question of taking sides.
The improvement in Fred, from the hobbledehoy of twelve years before, would have been remarked by anybody. He was still stocky of build, but his frame had become smartened, and his stature, rather below the average, only indicated its strength. The close-cropped moustache that he wore had improved his appearance, and there was a degree of self-confidence in his bearing which had not been there of old, when he had been alternately truculent and diffident. Whether or not he had improved in character was not so plain to see, but the years had brought him at least to a better understanding of the face that a man was expected to show before the world.
He laughed, a shade nervously, with his fingers at his moustache. If Pamela had been looking at him at that moment she would have seen him more like he had been as a boy than she had seen him hitherto in his manhood. "Norman and I had a quarrel about you the very last time I saw him," he said.
She did look at him then, with a hint of displeasure on her face. Recollection began to come to her. "Oh, yes," she said. "It was when you and Hugo found us here together."
He saw that he had made a mistake, and hastened to retrieve it. "I've always been sorry for what happened then," he said. "I'm ready to tell Norman so when I see him. Probably he has remembered it against me. We didn't always get on very well as boys, but I always liked him, really—and admired him too, for his pluck."