"And after that he took a place down here?"
"Yes. Then I met him on the river the following summer, and found he'd got rooms in one of the Nell Gwynne Cottages, if you call that a place."
"I see."
But there was no more to see; there never had been much, but now Blanche was standing up and gazing out of the balcony into the belt of singing sunshine between the opposite side of the road and the invisible river acres away.
"Why shouldn't we go down to Littleford and get out the boat if you're really going to make an afternoon of it?" she said. "But you simply must see Martha first; and while she's making herself fit to be seen, you must take something for the good of the house. I'll bring it to you on a lordly tray."
She brought him siphon, stoppered bottle, a silver biscuit-box of ancient memories, and left him alone with them some little time; for the young mistress, like her old retainer in another minute, was simply dying to make herself more presentable. Yet when she had done so, and came back like snow, in a shirt and skirt just home from the laundry, she saw that he did not see the difference. His devouring eyes shone neither more nor less; but he had also devoured every biscuit in the box, though he had begun by vowing that he had lunched in town, and stuck to the fable still.
Old Martha had known him all his life, but best at the period when he used to come to nursery tea at Littleford. She declared she would have known him anywhere as he was, but she simply hadn't recognized him in that photograph with his beard.
"I can see where it's been," said Martha, looking him in the lower temperate zone. "But I'm so glad you've had it off, Mr. Cazalet."
"There you are, Blanchie!" crowed Cazalet. "You said she'd be disappointed, but Martha's got better taste."
"It isn't that, sir," said Martha earnestly. "It's because the dreadful man who was seen running out of the drive, at your old home, he had a beard! It's in all the notices about him, and that's what's put me against them, and makes me glad you've had yours off."