She felt her hair cling to her cheek.
Cissy Fitz Hugh in her frills was limp as a wet doll, and prettily cross.
“They must have heard us, with all that row on the gravel!” she fretted. “There—at last!”
The door had opened, presenting them precipitately with the heart of the house—the big wainscoted living-hall, rugged, divaned, firelit, and full of people. They were not really more than a dozen, the women in golf-shirts, the men in shooting-coats and leggings—the flotsam and jetsam of a day’s sport made sociable with tea.
Their high, cheery babble just paused and caught its note again as Mrs. Budd, hard upon the heels of the maid who had opened the door, fairly pounced upon her belated guests, and sucked them in to a pleasant snapping of talk and wood fires. Her tall, robust figure in its red golf-waistcoat bristled with welcomes.
“Now I know you’re drenched! The fog’s a perfect rain! I’m so glad.”
She kissed Cissy warmly, her eyes snapping meanwhile from Florence to Longacre.
“Come straight to the fire. Do come to the fire, Mrs. Essington, and Agnès shall take your wet things.”
Alert for impending introductions, she half turned to Florence with the name of a guest at her lips, but Florence had already been cut off from the rest of the party by a large man with his hands in the sagging pockets of an old shooting-coat. He had at the same time, in an incredibly short space, furnished her with tea, and now stood above her while she drank it, rocking softly to and fro on his feet, and talking steadily. Occasionally he gesticulated with a large, open hand.
Cissy Fitz Hugh had gone her own way some distance into a number of conversations. It devolved upon Longacre to be led about the circle with a name here and a name there, and a blur of presences that vexed his continental habit, and left him, at the finish, still face to face with his hostess.