An answering flash hidden from him rose in her own eyes. One could serve one's country by other ways than the knitting of stockings. When she turned, she had smoothed accusation from her expression and even smiled.
"It is almost impossible to realize," she said dreamily, and with a clarified innocence of having meant anything by that emphasized "is."
Basil Stafford eyed her suspiciously, until a sudden smile made him quite good-looking. He took out a pair of glasses.
"That's a liner," he said. "See the far-off steamer, and those are two tramps with food for us. What if the Germans fulfil the threat they are whispering of already and cut off our supplies? It would be reality then, Miss Freyne, over here."
"We could burn turf and eat chickens," said Gheena briefly, "and catch fish. We need never starve here. And is that petrol in yet? I told Darby Malachi's public house, and I waited there and left a message."
"You said McInerny's," said Stafford, screwing down the tank. "Not Malachi's."
"McInerny's—no. Ask Darby."
Gheena found people who contradicted her extremely tiresome. She flashed an awe-inspiring glance at her pilot and repeated "Malachi's" angrily. Lancelot never dared to contradict her; he might disagree vaguely, but he only did it in his mind and not aloud; or to his mother afterwards, who would say, sighing, that heiresses were always wrong-minded; but that, after all, once there was money nothing mattered, and that it was only in small houses with one sitting-room that quarrelling was really objectionable. Lancelot had been duly instructed that he was to marry his cousin Gheena.
"Well, if I said McInerny's I meant Malachi's, and Darby might know the other would be quite out of my way, unless I went to fetch the letters, and it was too early for that," said Gheena, unruffled. "Is—there—any news to-day?"
Basil stopped the car to pull out a telegram, one crisply short.