‘Can we?’ says Carew. They seem a little tongue-tied.
‘As often as ever you like. Look here, be up at six to-morrow morning, and we’ll catch them feeding. And if you will stay and breakfast with me, it will be a kindness to a solitary man.’
‘Oh, thank you!’ says Dominick rapturously. Carew, however, looks a little crestfallen, whereupon Dom begins to whisper in his ear. The words ‘every second shot’ reach Mr. Crosby.
‘If either of you wants a gun, I can find you one,’ says he carelessly, after which joy unruffled reigns. ‘I make only one stipulation,’ he adds: ‘that you won’t shoot me.’
‘Oh, hang it, we are not such duffers as that!’ says Carew.
They all laugh at this, and all, as usual, accompany him to the gate to give him a kind send-off.
As he disappears up the road past the little side-gate of the Cottage, Dom makes a rush back to the house. ‘I must go and polish up the old gun,’ says he. Betty follows him, with Tom and Jacky.
‘How kind he is!’ says Susan, turning to Carew. Her tone is warm and grateful. There is no doubt that Carew’s answer would have been equally warm, but it never comes.
A little sound—the creaking of a rusty hinge—at this moment attracts his attention, and Susan’s also. They glance quickly towards the little green gate of the Cottage.
It is slowly opening!