She met Tom’s eager gaze with unembarrassed, unaverted looks. They had been excellent friends when Tom had stayed with them not long ago at Chesterford, and this seemed simply a continuation of their early comradeship, for it was evident that he was quite a boy still. But almost immediately something in his look, or some half-conscious reminiscence of that moment, a fortnight ago, when she had looked at herself in the glass in Mr. Carlingford’s drawing-room, caused her to turn her eyes down, and for the first time she noticed that Tom was carrying a gun. The desire for an intelligible reason why he should have been found standing in a bramble bush on a cold winter’s morning had not appealed to her before.
“Have you had good sport?” she asked, pointing to the gun.
Tom followed the direction of her finger, and to him also apparently it occurred for the first time that he was out shooting.
“Yes, very fair,” said Tom. “By the way, what’s happened to the pigeons?”
Almost as he spoke the head keeper emerged from the bracken, proud in the consciousness of a skilfully executed duty. He touched his hat to May, and turned to Tom.
“Wonderful lot of pigeons in this morning, sir,” he said. “Didn’t hear you shooting, Master Tom.”
“No, I didn’t see any birds. Did any come out over me?”
“Ten or twelve at least, sir, and the same over Mr. Markham.”
“Oh, well, it can’t be helped,” said Tom, rather confusedly. “We’ll go home to lunch now, Kimberley, and come out again after. We’re quite close to the house.”
“Is my father out with you?” asked May.