"This time," said Mr. Freyne, "Gheena will not wish to come home."
"If you mean she'll be engaged to Lancelot," said Matilda Freyne. "Of course, Dearest, if you think so, but I do not. He's so young and so stout, and she never liked fat men, and I'd much rather it was Darby."
Dearest ensconced himself behind the wheel and swore softly.
"He's saying 'Damn it! I should know best,'" whispered Stafford.
"At this distance you can't hear," said Gheena.
They were squeezed up together in the window, safe behind a veil of cobwebs, a friendliness unknown before between them. Gheena had forgotten war and spying. She was with someone who was protecting her.
"Shall we go out the back avenue? it's shorter," said Mr. Freyne.
Instantly Gheena's hand went out and caught Stafford's arm. They remembered the car down there.
"Mike Dundon put new sthones upon it only yesterday," said Phil stolidly. "And the off tyre is shaky, sir."
Basil Stafford felt that no half-crown had been so well earned as that which he put into Phil's hand when the car had hummed away out the front gate.