What did he mean? It hadn't been in chance hands.
It had been in the hands of Miss von Schwarzenberg. And Miss von Schwarzenberg, Napier reminded his chief, was an outsider. Or, if not that (hastily he readjusted himself to the McIntyre view) she was at all events outside the official circle.
"My dear boy, of course she is. She is a woman. And beyond knowing an English equivalent for a German word, she understands as much about the bearing of a paper on International Commerce—as much as that Aberdeen terrier."
"I think, sir, you underrate Miss von Schwarzenberg's intelligence."
"Or maybe you," said Sir William, wrinkling his little nose with silent laughter, "maybe you underrate the Aberdeen's."
Miss Greta did not produce her friend at tea time. "Nan doesn't care about tea. Americans don't, you know. She will meet us at the links."
And it so fell out.
If Miss Ellis didn't "take to" tea, she "took to" golf "as if she'd been a born Scot," according to Julian. Why on earth Miss von Schwarzenberg should want to go on trying when the power to hit a ball was so obviously not among her many gifts, passed Napier's understanding. It struck him as rather nice of her that she wasn't the least disturbed by Nan's swinging efficiency. Was that because it got rid of her?—put wide stretches of sand and gorse between the ill-matched couples? Napier would hardly have stood it so amiably but for Julian's disarming frankness as to the satisfaction he, at all events, was deriving from the arrangement.
And Nan—planted high above a bunker, hair rather wild, face sparkling with zest for the game, or for the company, or for that she was Nan Ellis.