“Would you care to bring your collection over and compare notes with Yvonne, Miss Calmour? Let me see, we are going back home on Monday. Why not come over to lunch on Tuesday? You have a bicycle—but I forgot, you can hardly carry a lot of post-card books on a bicycle.”
“Easily. I have a carrier on the back wheel which has often held a far greater weight,” answered the girl, hardly able to conceal her delight.
“Very well, then, that’s settled. But—don’t stop to shoot any more blue wildebeeste on the way.”
“Oh, that wretched creature! Am I never to hear the last of it?” laughed Delia, merrily rueful.
Two considerations had moved Haldane in the issuing of this invitation—the spontaneous and whole-souled admiration evinced by this girl for Yvonne, and the wistful look on the face of the latter at the propinquity of a good post-card collection which she might not see. He prided himself upon his knowledge of character, too, and watching Delia closely was inclined to endorse Wagram’s opinion. The house of Calmour was manifestly and flagrantly impossible; but this seemed a nice sort of girl, entirely different to the others. Moreover, Yvonne seemed to like her, and Yvonne’s instincts were singularly accurate for her age.
“Well, I must be moving,” said Delia, with something like a sinking of the heart. Wagram had disappeared for some time, and the groups on the lawn were thinning out fast. “But I don’t see Mr Wagram anywhere.”
“He’s probably in the big tent making them a speech or something,” said Haldane. “There, I thought so,” as a sound of lusty cheering arose at no great distance. “He’s sure to be there. Yvonne will pilot you there if you want to find him. It’s an institution I fight rather shy of,” he added, with a laugh.
But a strange repugnance to mingling in a crowd took hold of Delia just then. Would Mr Haldane kindly make her adieux for her? And then, having taken leave of them, she went round to where she had left her bicycle, and was in the act of mounting when—
“Hallo, Miss Calmour, are you off already? I’ve been rather remiss, I fear, but you’ve no notion how one gets pulled this way and that way on an occasion of this kind. I hope Yvonne took care of you.”
“She did indeed, Mr Wagram. What a perfectly sweet child she is! Do you know, I am to lunch there next week, and compare post-card collections.”