This was what he sprung upon us now! Consternation! The blankest of awkward pauses!
Then Colonel Fielding, biting that golden morsel of a moustache, cleared his throat, turned to the shepherd, and said coldly and with as much dignity as could be lent to an obviously foolish remark, "I thought you didn't know any English?"
Ivor blinked mildly back at the officer and answered: "'Deed, I not know only very little, sir."
"I expect you all know a great deal more than you—er—give out, you Welsh!" declared Colonel Fielding, half-exasperated, half-amused. "That's how you get on in the world, isn't it?"
"Sir?" said Ivor, with a pleasant, puzzled smile.
Impossible to tell whether he understood or not! We should never know, either, how much of the talk we'd had had been eagerly taken in by him! All of it? We couldn't exactly ask him! Colonel Fielding glanced at me with a half-humorous little shrug. The same thought struck us both at the same minute.
One thing was pretty certain. Very shortly Ivor would retail to Mrs. Ivor in fluent Welsh everything that he had understood of our English. In that gossipy little nest which was Careg, gaping for any crumb of news, it would very soon be all over the place that Colonel Fielding was to marry "that little young lady that's working for Mr. Price"! Yes; by midday it would be proclaimed. It would run like wildfire up to the Hospital and down to the Land Girls' Camp. Everybody would know! Before Elizabeth herself knew!
I could not help laughing at the dismayed face of young Colonel Fielding as he stood there, frowning, the wind taken out of his sails. It did serve him right! Mischievous as he was, and full of guile and wile and teasing, sheltering himself behind that pretence of shyness, he found his match in this Welshman who put up that bluff of ignorance! The game was to Ivor the shepherd, who did understand English after all....
But Colonel Fielding trumped that. He turned to me and remarked: "I am going to find her now, at once."
And he said it in rapid French!