Mrs. Cartwright laughed as she rose to her feet. She had been putting into position a fallen tin cup, shaped like a flower-pot, and left to catch the resin as it oozed stickily from the trunk. Most of the firs in this part of the forest had a tin blade, that had scored them down, left plunged into the bark.
"Delightful, to be able to turn into any sort of plant, rather than be bored by the wrong man," remarked Mrs. Cartwright lightly, dusting her hands.
"What a pull for those nymphs! Must have made it worth while to live in a world where there was no tea. I am ready for mine, though——"
The three went on homewards together, the Professor walking between Olwen and the writer, who found herself once more admiring his Druidic head and still-active frame. In precisely the same spirit she would have admired some stately, ivy-grown keep that had once echoed to the shouts of archers; she was scarcely the type of woman who becomes an "old man's darling——"
But little Olwen was busily thinking: "Now! I do believe the Charm has begun to work. Didn't Uncle say she was like Daphne?—and doesn't she really look younger today? It's begun! And see how she's smiling at him and talking to him about Anatole France.... But I wish they'd leave off about books and begin about themselves. I wish I could run on and leave them to come home together (but they both walk as fast as I do any day, bother them!). If only we could meet somebody that I could fall behind with, and let Mrs. Cartwright have Uncle all to herself——"
This wish was fulfilled at a turn in the path where there was a clearing in the symmetrically spaced pines. Three paths converged towards a sort of oasis of heather and undergrowth, surrounding a hut of untrimmed pine-branches. Huge blackberry runners, purple and green, flung themselves before the door of it. And there stood, fixedly regarding the place, a boyish figure in khaki with an ultra-floppy cap at a rakish angle on his head.
"Are you thinking of taking that house, Mr. Brown?" Mrs. Cartwright asked him laughingly, as they came up.
Mr. Brown gave quite a jump before he turned and saluted the party.
Up to now they had known this young man as one very fond of his food, always sitting on the back of his neck in the most comfortable chair he could find, eternally smoking cigarettes, and evidently bent on getting his money's worth out of the hotel. But it was a different young man who now turned his pink face and pop-eyes on them. They'd evidently interrupted him in thinking over something; thinking hard.
He echoed Mrs. Cartwright's last words. "Thinking of taking that hut?" he repeated, in a voice that seemed to bring a breath of crowded A B C shops, of Tube-lifts and cheerful workaday London generally into that stately French glade. "Well, d'you know, that's a wheeze. It's a dashed good idea. I was just that moment thinking that something would have to be done!"