The man bent his head quite close to my head and laughed. It was rather a beastly laugh, not villainy, just as if he didn't care whether an earthquake or the millennium started next minute.
"Well," he said, "you seem to have had your innings, Miss Burbridge. Now I want mine."
"I'll tell dad when I get home," I babbled foolishly. "I'll explain fully all about the searchlights and everything."
I felt absolutely the same as I did when I sat down at my "maths." paper when I tried to matric., after having been awake all night with raging toothache. I felt I couldn't be decisive or adequate or even sensible, I couldn't deal efficiently with a fly that settled on my own nose.
"The inopportune arrival of the Colonel and his wife have made it rather difficult to explain," he hazarded. "Don't you remember gracefully acknowledging our tender regard for each other, and equally gracefully accepting congratulations on existence of same?" He sounded all the time frightfully amused in a bored sort of manner. He had the most delightful kind of voice, frightfully deep and soft, and he drawled in a fascinating way.
We walked, unconsciously, slower and slower, far behind the others, in the scent of the heather that clothed the hill.
It was a wonderful night. It sort of caught you by the throat and made you ache for all the things you could never, never have; crave the deep friendships and wonderful love that would never come your way.
"I am afraid I have been very stupid," I said. "I often am. You see, I am afraid of father."
"He's a bully, a rotten bully," he said; and then: "I beg your pardon, Miss Burbridge—I shouldn't have said that."
"It's just that he shouts, and I can't think when he shouts. I just say something that will make him stop shouting—anything."