I ran back to the hut.
So late! I found the tea-supper all cleared away, and most of the Campites dispersed about their evening avocations.
Only Elizabeth the trusty had kept back for me milk, a huge plateful of bread-and-butter, and cold bacon.
I expected that Elizabeth would sit down near me while I devoured my meal, and would spice it with comments on the reason for my lateness. Here I had reckoned without my hostess. Not only did she not have a word to say about my having walked—or loitered—home with a young man; but she hadn't, apparently, got a word to say to me about anything, though we had hardly seen each other all day!
In an abstracted way she glanced at the food disappearing from before me, murmuring absently:
"Mustard? Or don't you take it?" Then, looking at the clock said: "Slow, I'm sure." And then, with a curious look on her small face, she left me and strayed forth into the gloaming outside the hut.
I finished my meal, cleared it away, and went out to find her. No sign of Elizabeth in the field that led down to the bathing-pool. I crossed the tiny bridge over the stream, and wandered into the next field.
Here, through the branches of some hazels growing beside a stone fence, I caught sight of the gleam of a light overall. I went up to it. I found Elizabeth in a nook where it was almost dark under the branches.
"Hullo!" I greeted her. "So this is where you've hidden yourself away, is it?"
Elizabeth, turning, gave a violent start. "Hullo," she said, in what I can only describe as a most unwelcoming tone. To me, her inseparable chum!