“The Calmour girls! oh yes, pretty—devilish pretty—but—” constituting the comment, either uttered or thought. But the fourteen-mile ride out, and rather more back, added to the glow of health which mantled each very attractive face.
“There’s the old Court, all shut up,” commented Clytie as the pile rose clear against its background of now naked trees in the bright frosty moonlight. “What a sin to own a place like that and leave it shut up. I wouldn’t.”
“Wouldn’t you! You’d vote it slow in a month, and start off for town, if I know anything of you,” answered Delia, starting out of a brown study; for they were just passing the very point in the road where Wagram had surprised her while having her fortune told by the gipsy. A little farther, and they came to the scene of the gnu incident. There was the white gate gleaming in the moonlight; but the slumbrous wealth of foliage had given place to bare boughs, forming a frosted network against the winter sky. And with that day there came back to her another—a golden, glowing August day—that Sunday, the last long day of interrupted sunshine—when they had surprised the mysterious stranger and trespasser. Somehow from that day the rising of the cloud had seemed to date, but of this she said nothing to Clytie.
On arrival home they were met by Bob, looking more than scared.
“About time you came,” he grunted. “Don’t know what’s up with the old man.”
“Oh dear. The usual thing,” said Delia, not scornful now, for she had undergone something of a change in every way.
“No, it isn’t,” returned Bob quickly. “He’s not ‘fresh’ this time, but he’s devilish queer.”
Old Calmour was lying on the sofa, breathing stertorously, and looking, as Bob had said, “devilish queer.”
“Get on your bike, Bob, and go and fetch Thorpe,” commanded Clytie the capable, at the same time loosening her father’s shirt collar.
“Can’t; it’s punctured.”