“I wonder if you saw my father on the road?”
“I saw nobody on the road except a sour-looking gentleman of middle age who was breaking the Sabbath by carrying a large brown box on his back.”
“Where did you pass him?” she asked, interested.
“Two miles away—less than that.” And then, a doubt intruding: “I hope that I wasn’t describing your parent?”
“It sounds rather like him,” she said without annoyance. “Daddy is a naturalist photographer. He takes moving pictures of birds and things—he is an amateur, of course.”
“Of course,” agreed Dick.
He brought the buckets back to where he had found them and lingered. Searching for an excuse, he found it in the garden. How far he might have exploited this subject is a matter for conjecture. Interruption came in the shape of a young man who emerged from the front door of the cottage. He was tall and athletic, good-looking. . . . Dick put his age at twenty.
“Hello, Ella! Father back?” he began, and then saw the visitor.
“This is my brother,” said the girl, and Dick Gordon nodded. He was conscious that this free-and-easy method of getting acquainted was due largely, if not entirely, to his youthful appearance. To be treated as an inconsiderable boy had its advantages. And so it appeared.
“I was telling him that boys ought not to be allowed to drive big cars,” she said. “You remember the awful smash there was at the Shoreham cross-roads?”