Next morning (Saturday), the mystery of that arrival at The Hurst the evening before grew infinitely more intense. It was believed that only one person had come, and yet there was no doubt that several pounds of salmon, dozens (“Literally dozens,” said Mrs. Boucher, “for I saw the basket”) of eggs, two chickens, a leg of lamb, as well as countless other provisions unidentified were delivered at the back door of The Hurst; a positive frieze of tradesmen’s boys was strung across the Green. Even if the mysterious arrival was Lucia herself, she could not, unless the whirl and worldliness of her London life had strangely increased her appetite, eat all that before Monday. And besides, why had she not rung up Georgie, or somebody, or opened her bedroom window on this hot morning? Or could it be Pepino again, sent down here for a rest-cure and a stuffing of his emaciated frame? But then he would not have come down without some sort of attendant to look after him.... Riseholme was completely baffled; never had its powers of inductive reasoning been so nonplussed, for though so much went into The Hurst, nobody but the tradesmen’s boys with empty baskets came out. Georgie and Daisy stared at each other in blankness over the garden paling, and when, in despair of arriving at any solution, they sought the oracles of Abfou, he would give them nothing but hesitating Arabic.
“Which shows,” said Daisy, as she put the planchette away in disgust, “that even he doesn’t know, or doesn’t wish to tell us.” Lunch time arrived, and there were very poor appetites in Riseholme (with the exception of that Gargantuan of whom nothing was known). But as for going to The Hurst and ringing the bell and asking if Mrs. Lucas was at home all Riseholme would sooner have died lingering and painful deaths, rather than let Lucia know that they took the smallest interest in anything she had done, was doing, or would do.
About three o’clock Georgie was sitting on the Green opposite his house, finishing his sketch, which the affairs of the Museum had caused him sadly to neglect. He had got it upside down on his easel and was washing some more blue into the sky, when he heard the hoot of a motor. He just looked up, and what he saw caused his hand to twitch so violently that he put a large dab of cobalt on the middle of his red-brick house. For the motor had stopped at The Hurst, not a hundred yards away, and out of it got Lucia and Pepino. She gave some orders to her chauffeur, and then without noticing him (perhaps without seeing him) she followed Pepino into the house. Hardly waiting to wash the worst of the cobalt off his house, Georgie hurried into Daisy’s, and told her exactly what had happened.
“No!” said Daisy, and out they came again, and stood in the shadow of her mulberry tree to see what would happen next. The mulberry tree had recovered from the pruning of its roots (so it wasn’t it which Abfou had said was dead), and gave them good shelter.
Nothing happened next.
“But it’s impossible,” said Daisy, speaking in a sort of conspiratorial whisper. “It’s queer enough her coming without telling any of us, but now she’s here, she surely must ring somebody up.”
Georgie was thinking intently.
“The next thing that will happen,” he said, “will be that servants and luggage will arrive from the station. They’ll be here any minute; I heard the 3.20 whistle just now. She and Pepino have driven down.”
“I shouldn’t wonder,” said Daisy. “But even now, what about the chickens and all those eggs? Georgie, it must have been her cook who came last night—she and Pepino were dining out in London—and ordered all those provisions this morning. But there were enough to last them a week. And three pints of cream, so I’ve heard since, and enough ice for a skating rink and——”
It was then that Georgie had the flash of intuition that was for ever memorable. It soared above inductive reasoning.