Why was it, he wondered, that he found it so difficult to talk to her, except upon one subject?
He remembered delightful evenings, ending in these painful and tedious journeys à deux. Tonight, for instance, it was going to be the very dickens with this little Miss Howel-Jones. A jolly nice little kid, thought the sailor, a pretty kid! But here they might be held up together in this confounded train for another hour, perhaps, and he couldn't even see her face, and he was blessed if he knew what more to say to her——Why, he'd said everything as he sat next to her at dinner, he and that funny little Brown chap. He did envy the flow of chaps like that! Chaps who could yarn away upon this, that, and the other subject for three years or the duration of the War. Talk to girls for ever, they could, without repeating themselves!
"I thought it looked a likely sort of evening for a raid," he heard himself say at this point.
"Yes," said the girl opposite to him in the dark.
Of course he'd said everything there was to be said on the subject of air-raids in general and this air-raid in particular on the way to Baker Street. Yet he couldn't sit here in the dark opposite to her for the whole length of the raid, saying nothing?
Still the guns made distant thunder....
"I do hope you aren't frightened," he said. "It's quite all right, you know."
"Oh, I know. I'm not a bit frightened," came from Olwen; truthfully enough.
She was not frightened as she settled herself back against the padding of the carriage. She was only a little sleepy, a little anxious for the kind-hearted Lizzie, who would be waiting up for her in that pretty villa at Wembley Park; she was also excited and elated still after her lovely party.
She was thinking far more of that party than she was of her companion of the raid!