Captain Ross informed her definitely that he himself had no use for such sentimental balderdash; and then told her he guessed it made her pretty late, going back all the way to Wembley Park (where her Aunt lived) after the theatre. He hoped that at least young Ellerton took her all the way home.
"Yes, thank you; he did."
"M'm. Last train from Baker Street, I presume. And then you've a long trail from the station to your house. In the drive, isn't it?"
"Yes, but we didn't go by train at all," the girl explained. "Mr. Ellerton managed to get a taxi to take us all the way back from town."
"In war-time?" Captain Ross's black-cat-like face was a study in righteous indignation. Then he took a lighter tone, tilting his chin contemptuously. "Well! If Mr. Ellerton's got money to burn that way it's no concairrrrn of mine. Taxis out to Wembley Park with a girl who's employed in the same office as he is. That's Ellerton's lookout. Not the kind of thing I'd care to be seen doing myself. (No, I won't have anything to drink. A ginger-ale, waiter.) Still, if he thinks that's all right in war-time and for folks on War work together, I've nothing to say."
The ghost of a smile hovered about Olwen's red mouth as Captain Ross went on saying this "nothing."
"Sweet as honey to any girl he takes out, no doubt. The regular naval flirt. He held your hand in the theatre, or some foolishness of that sort, I daresay."
"He didn't!" retorted little Olwen, quickly, and then a message seemed to come to her, whispered, perhaps by the generations of girls in love who still survived in her blood. Upon that instinct she added, "He did not hold my hand——in the theatre."
The finest judge of women in Europe rose swiftly enough to this. "Is that so? You mean he only held it in the taxi going home. A much better scheme altogether."
Olwen, still refusing to meet the aggressive brown eyes that challenged her over the jar of mimosa on the table, retorted, "I didn't say so."