It just shows that people are quite right to teach children never to turn round on the road.
I wish I hadn’t!
CHAPTER XV
“THE LIGHT OF OTHER DAYS”
“Nancy! I say, Nancy! Here’s Billy and this new man of his turned up hours before we expected them, and mother’s out calling somewhere, and Blanche is in the middle of washing her hair, and just look at the awful rip I’ve made in my frock; I can’t come!” announced Theo in a voice subdued almost to a stage whisper when I met her on the stairs this afternoon. “So you be a saint and go in and talk pretty to the visitor till tea, will you?”
“All right,” I laughed; and passed on to the drawing-room.
It was cool and dim in there after the sunshine of the garden, where I had been lazing over a book and forgetting this morning’s stress, and for a moment my eyes could scarcely make out the two figures that stood with their backs to the white-curtained French windows.
Then, beside the Governor’s tall bulk, I saw a small, dapper, masculine silhouette with a rather too abrupt “pinch-in” at the waist of its coat, and a perky, quick turn of the head; the general effect of Mr. Cyril Maude in some military part that I had once seen. Was it this that seemed so familiar, I wondered?
A monocle fell with a click against a waistcoat-button; then, as I came forward, a voice, also vaguely familiar, cried in amazement: