Then I heard myself exclaim: "Oh, Muriel! You really are going to marry Harry? I am so glad; so glad!"
(Which I certainly was!)
Elizabeth and the others added congratulations. Vic declared there never was such a spot for "getting off" as here! Mr. Price beamed as benignantly as if Muriel were a favourite sister, and little Mrs. Price, all smiles, insisted on our drinking Miss Elvey's health in her own elderberry wine, in the dining-room.
"Come in, all of you!" she urged hospitably. "Come, Captain Holiday——"
But Captain Holiday stood still, smiling.
"Mrs. Price, I'll join you in one second, but Mr. Price has got his coat, and I really can't come in like this in shirt-sleeves. I must get a coat; I've lost mine."
"Lost it?" exclaimed the farmer. "Dear me, where did you do that, Captain Holiday?"
Captain Holiday answered promptly and serenely. "Miss Matthews thinks she passed a coat in the harvest field as she was coming along" (and there was a "Dare-to-contradict-me" gleam in the eyes he turned to me). "You might just come along with me, Joan, and show me where you saw it?"
Gasping over this bit of obvious improvisation, I found it had succeeded.
Muriel and the others had disappeared into the house, and the shirt-sleeved Captain Holiday was piloting me gently but firmly across the now-deserted farmyard.