"No, you know—it's too bad, really. I have been most frightfully busy," he apologised. "But we'll fix it up before you go to-night, shall we? You must come." At this he was glad to see that the Little Thing looked really pleased.
She was awfully nice and sensible, he thought for the severalth time. Again the odd wish took him that had taken him in that field. Yes! He would like to touch those babyish-looking curls of hers with a finger. Or even to rumple them against his cheek.... Another most foolish and incomprehensible wish had occurred to him about this girl, even in her absence. Apropos of nothing, one evening in his rooms he had remembered the look of that throat of hers; round and sturdy and white above her low collar. And he had thought he would rather like to put his own hands about it, and to pretend—quite gently, of course—to throttle the Little Thing. To-night she'd bundled it all up in that sort of feather boa.... Pity.... She was ever so much prettier without.
Fellow can't say that sort of thing to a girl, though, thought the simple Paul.
So he merely said, instead, "Let me stick that down for you somewhere," and he leant forward and took from her the plate that had held her cress-and-chicken sandwiches. Then he crossed his long legs and leant back again. It was jolly and restful here in the dim arbour with her; the sound of music and laughter came, much softened, from the marquee. Nearer to them, on the water below the willows, there was a little splashing and twittering of the moor-hen, roused by something, and the scarcely audible murmur of the Thames, speeding past House-boat Country to London ... the workaday Embankment.... It was jolly to be so quiet....
Then, into the happy silence that had fallen between them, there came a sound—the sound of the crunching of gravel. Gwenna looked up. Two figures sauntered past down the path; both tall and shapely and black against the paling, star-sprinkled sky above the frieze of sighing willows. Then Leslie's clear, careless voice drifted to their ears.
"Afraid not.... Anyhow, what on earth would be the good of caring 'a little'?... I look upon you as such an infant—in arms——"
Here there was a bass mutter of, "Make it your arms, and I don't mind!"
Then Leslie's insouciant: "I knew you'd say that obvious thing. I always do know what you're going to do or say next ... fatal, that.... A girl can't want to marry a man when——"
Apparently, then, the Dean's son was proposing again?
As the couple of free-limbed black shadows passed nearer, Paul Dampier kicked his heel against his chair. He moved in it to make it creak more noisily.