"Yes, I think she's a perfect dear, and quite awfully pretty."
Julian mentally applauded her.
"It will be delightful if you'll come and meet us," he said cordially.
"You must come in and make tea for us at Culmhayes, if you will. We ought to be at the cross-roads, just this side of Salt Marsh, soon after four. It will depend on the light. I doubt if we shall be able to go on much after half-past three."
Julian's prognostication was verified, but before the three men had reached the cross-roads, they encountered Iris and Miss Marchrose, silhouetted against the leaden sky of a rapidly-advancing winter twilight.
"You've come a long way!" exclaimed Julian, with an involuntary thought for the silk stockings and suède shoes which he felt convinced that Iris was still wearing.
"It wasn't too far for you?" asked Mark of Miss Marchrose, with friendly solicitude.
She only shook her head in reply, but Julian, with the odd intuition of a man with whom the observation of humanity has always been of prevailing interest, knew that she was inwardly responsive with all the quick gratitude of femininity for a man's rarely-expressed consideration for her physical limitations.
Iris said in a rather enfeebled voice:
"Oh, Douglas, have you been cruel and brutal and shot all those poor dear birds? How many did you kill?"