But it was with quite a genial "good afternoon" that Captain Ross set down the table-top beside the other furniture.
"Well, that's that, Brown," he said.
"Ah, thank you," from the other young officer. "Much obliged, I'm sure. Now, we'll fix this on to here——"
Olwen darted forward to help with the table-top, but the two young men had managed without her.
"That's the ticket. Now, Ross! What about this for a scene in a Canadian lumber camp? Yes; there's water over there, and I've got my old spirit-kettle. Might turn an honest penny, too, by giving teas in the forest. Parties catered for, eh? The Old Bull and Bush touch. Who speaks for the job of the pretty waitress?" with a cheerful grin at Olwen. "What, are you going on, Ross? I thought you'd come to lend a hand at my flit. Don't go. Stop and watch me work, anyway."
"I guess not," said the Staff Officer, with a flash of his splendid teeth, and with the gesture that always tore at Olwen's sympathy, the forward shrug of the shoulder that should have moved his right arm. "I'd just hate to think I was in anybody's way——" He saluted, without looking at Miss Howel-Jones any more than she was looking at him.
Another moment and his scarlet tabs had ceased to brighten that glade of a French wood, that heart of a Welsh maid.
Poor little Olwen sat there by Mr. Brown's hut, feeling as if she could with her own hands have pulled it down about his ears, just for sheer exasperation. It's true that he, Mr. Brown, was wearing the Charm that her own hand had tucked into his pocket—but that had no power over her here. Here she was, left! Left for the rest of the afternoon, possibly, in the company of a young man whom she didn't care if she never saw again. He could talk to her, it seemed; he could pick blackberries for her; he could suggest that she would make a pretty waitress.
But the one and only young man for whose attentions and compliments she would have wished—what did he do? Just chucked down, with a careless word, the table-top that he had been to fetch, and made off without a look or a thought for her, she told herself.
Yet she was wearing, as she always wore, hidden away next her heart, the disturbing Charm!