“I daresay. He hides there half the summer. But what’s that got to do with me?”
“He waved to us by mistake, and the next thing was that we met you and Sandham coming up as we went down.”
“So you put two and two together on the spot?”
“Well, more or less between us.”
“Oh, Carpenter, of course! He was with you, wasn’t he?”
“Yes. But Chips wouldn’t let out a word, any more than I would, Evan. Not,” added Jan, “that there’s anything to let out in what you’ve told me as yet.... Is there, Evan?” The opportunity afforded by a pointed pause had not been taken. “You may as well tell me now you’ve got so far—but don’t you if you’ve thought better of it.” There again was the studious delicacy that was growing on Jan, that had always been in his blood.
Evan flung up his head once more.
“I’ll tell you, of course. I came to tell you. It’s nothing awful after all. There’s no harm in it, really; only you can do things at home, quite openly, with your people, that become a crime if you do them here.”
“That’s true enough,” said Jan who still smoked his pipe in Norfolk. He felt relieved. Evidently it was some such trifle that law-abiding Evan was magnifying in his constitutional horror of a row.
Jan asked outright if it was smoking, if Mulberry had been getting them cigars, and was at once informed eagerly that he had. But that was not all; the old tell-tale face was scarlet with the rest. And out it all came at last.