He looked at her admiringly. The colour had come back to her cheeks and the blue eyes danced with delighted anticipation.
“Very well,” he said. “Here’s your tea. Is it all as you like it? Yes? Well, I’ll just go and see that all your things are aboard.”
He went into the bar department, drank a glass of brandy and water, then went out to the waggonette. Everything was stowed safe and snug. There was certainly not a “mountain of luggage” he noticed, but it struck him that Melian’s “plenty of wraps” was a bit of imagination. He shed his fur coat and threw a French cloak over his shoulders. Then he went back to her.
She was ready, and the blue eyes had taken on quite a new light—very different eyes now, to when their sole look out was bounded by a patch of grey murk as a background to bizarre and hideous patterns in chimney pots.
“Here’s the shandradan, dear. Now are you absolutely dead cert you’re equal to a five mile open drive. Here—put on this.”
“This” was the fur coat—and she objected.
“Tut-tut, I’m skipper of this ship, and I won’t have opposition. So—in you get.”
He had hoisted it on to her, and now enveloped in it she climbed to the front seat beside him. He arranged a corresponding thickness of double rug over her knees.
“Thank you, sir,” said the porter, catching what was thrown to him. “Beg pardon, Mr Mervyn,” he went on, sinking his voice, “but has anything more been ’eard about—”
But Mervyn drew his whip across the pony’s hind quarters with a sharpness that that long suffering quadruped had certainly never merited, and the vehicle sprang into lively motion, which was all the answer the ill-advised querist obtained.