"Came up yesterday, I s'pose," the young man told himself as the soup-plates were whisked away.
Gwenna suspected a twinkle in those unusual blue eyes as he said next, "Haven't you lived in Wales, though?"
"Well, yes, I have," admitted Gwenna Williams in her soft, quaint accent, "but how did you know?"
"Oh, I guessed. I've stayed there myself, fishing, one time and another," her neighbour told her. "Used to go down to a farmhouse there, sort of place that's all slate slabs, and china dogs, and light-cakes for tea; ages ago, with my cousin. That cousin," and he gave a little jerk of his fair head towards the black-stocked, Trelawney-whiskered young man who was engrossed with Miss Long. "We used to—Ah! Dash!" he broke off suddenly and violently. "It's gone down my back now."
Gwenna, startled, gazed upon this stranger who was so good to look at and so extremely odd to listen to. Gone down his back? She simply could not help asking, "What has?"
"That pin," he answered ruefully.
Then he tilted back his fair head and smiled, with deep dimples creasing his sunburnt cheeks and a flash of even white showing between his care-free, strongly-modelled lips. And hereupon Gwenna realised that after all she'd been right. He was "nice." He began to laugh outright, adding, "You must think me an absolute lunatic: I'd better tell you what it's all about——"
He took a mouthful of sole and told her, "Fact is, I lost my collar-stud when I was dressing, the stud for the back of my collar; and I had to fasten my collar down at the last minute with a pin. It's been getting on my nerves. Has, really. I've been waiting for it to run into the back of my neck——"
"So that was why he seemed so absent-minded!" thought Gwenna, feeling quite disproportionately glad and amused over this trifle. She said, "I thought you turned as if you'd got a stiff neck! I thought you'd been sitting in a draught."
He made another puzzling remark.