"Good afternoon, Mr. Price," said Dick Holiday. My heart jumped to see him as he saluted me; his brown face, however, had never a smile.
"Muriel, get in," he said, "I'll drive you back to the Lodge."
Colonel Fielding, with a more genial greeting to me, held open the field gate for Miss Elvey.
But Muriel allowed them to wait for her.
"Hullo, Cousin Dick," she called out airily from the cornfield. "What a way you have of popping in and out like a harlequin at a pantomime, haven't you? Mother and I thought we weren't going to see you for another whole day. How's London?"
"It still stands where it did," returned her cousin drily. He was evidently in no laughing mood. "Get in by me, Muriel."
Muriel strolled through the gate. "You don't seem to have come back in very gay spirits," she said. Then she turned to wave her little, white-gloved hand to the sailor to whom she had been talking.
I saw Dick Holiday give her a very steady glance. She laughed as she stood by the trap waiting before she put her foot on the step.
"Don't look black at me," she said to him. "I know you did tell me I wasn't to speak to the Germans. But I told you I would and I have. So there, Master Dick!" (Coquettishly.) "And these are very nice Germans, too, as it happens. I've had quite a chat with that delightful sailor-man with the blue eyes. I'm sure he's nothing to do with the people who do the dreadful things. These Germans are different."
As he gave her his hand to help her up into the trap I heard her cousin say, distinctly and steadily: