"Perhaps she didn't come up the worst bit," urged Christobel eagerly.
"The place we saw her on this morning is the worst bit--well, as bad as any. It's all bad. What did she tell that lie for, Crow, I ask you? I saw her. You saw her. Rum thing is she must have seen us. She was there the whole time we took getting from opposite the lighthouse to the north of the Beak. Just crawling up and down, and moving along. Why, the thing was patent. It was blazing. I swear I don't understand what Pamela is up to."
Christobel was on the point of suggesting a lame excuse; because she certainly had seen Pamela, when they became aware of a lady wandering over the grass in the wake of a King Charles spaniel whose nose was buttoned up so high that it seemed miraculous he could live upside down, as it were. He was attached to a long lead, and as he ran round tree trunks the lady became a fixture at unexpected moments, because she never let go whatever happened. She did not see the Romillys because she was as short-sighted as the spaniel.
Christobel hurried towards her, with a cry of "Good morning, Auntie A.," unwound the dog and the lady, and started them again on a clear space.
"My dear children," said Auntie A., beaming, "how nice to see you both, and looking so well too, but surely it is not summer holidays yet--what? Ah, I should have remembered. I saw you last week I believe, dear Adrian, before Mollie went. I miss her so much, especially in the matter of Charles and his exercise--I do assure you he sets me at defiance. Indeed he does. The spirit of the age, is it not? So sad! Excuse me, dear Christobel, but is my veil on my hat, I believe Dickens put it there when I came out, I feel certain she must have done so, yet I cannot find it."
"It is under your chin, Auntie A.," said Crow gently and unsmiling, "I expect it got crooked and you pulled it down. Shall I undo it, and start again?"
"If you would, dear, I should be most grateful," said Miss Ashington, beaming, and she stood still while Christobel undid the veil, took it off, and put it on again neatly over the brim of her wide hat. She stood still, but she talked earnestly all the time about land girls and farming, which was her special hobby at the moment.
Adrian teased the King Charles. He hated it, and its way of making snuffling noises and barks like coughs. Auntie A. never noticed that the dog was being teased, but she heard the coughing barks, and said she must go home and give poor Charles some tea made from stewed herbs. She had invented the cure herself. She and Charles drank it--at least it was forced down the spaniel's throat when he became extra snuffly.
"I really think he ought to have something, Miss Ashington," said Adrian gravely, "he sounds as though he'd got congestion of the lungs, or bronchitis, doesn't he, Crow?"
Christobel said: "Oh no, I don't think it's as bad as that," reproachfully, but Miss Ashington turned homeward; she was pulling the edge of her veil--already it was coming slowly down.