While they were speaking the erratic aviator had eventually swept earthwards towards a flat field at the foot of the slope, and was now coming towards them. Hilary Pierce had rather the look of a poet than a professional aviator; and though he had distinguished himself in the war, he was very probably one of those whose natural dream was rather of conquering the air than conquering the enemy. His yellow hair was longer and more untidy than when he was in the army; and there was a touch of something irresponsible in his roving blue eye. He had a vein of pugnacity in him, however, as was soon apparent. He had paused to speak to Joan Hardy by the rather tumble-down pig-sty in the corner, and when he came towards the breakfast-table he seemed transfigured as with flame.
“What’s all this infernal insane foolery?� he demanded. “Who has the damned impudence to tell the Hardys they mustn’t keep pigs? Look here, the time is come when we must burst up all this sort of thing. I’m going to do something desperate.�
“You’ve been doing desperate things enough for this morning,� said Hood. “I advise you to take a little desperate luncheon. Do sit down, there’s a good fellow, and don’t stamp about like that.�
“No, but look here——�
Pierce was interrupted by Joan Hardy, who appeared quietly at his elbow and said demurely to the company: “There’s a gentleman here who asks if he may be pardoned for speaking to you.�
The gentleman in question stood some little way behind in a posture that was polite but so stiff and motionless as almost to affect the nerves. He was clad in so complete and correct a version of English light holiday attire that they felt quite certain he was a foreigner. But their imaginations ranged the Continent in vain in the attempt to imagine what sort of foreigner. By the immobility of his almost moonlike face, with its faintly bilious tinge, he might almost have been a Chinaman. But when he spoke, they could instantly locate the alien accent.
“Very much distressed to butt in, gentlemen,� he said, “but this young lady allows you are first-class academic authorities on the sights of this locality. I’ve been mouching around trying to hit the trail of an antiquity or two, but I don’t seem to know the way to pick it up. If you’d be so kind as to put me wise about the principal architectural styles and historic items of this section, I’d be under a great obligation.�
As they were a little slow in recovering from their first surprise, he added patiently:
“My name is Enoch B. Oates, and I’m pretty well known in Michigan, but I’ve bought a little place near here; I’ve looked about this little planet and I’ve come to think the safest and brightest place for a man with a few dollars is the place of a squire in your fine old feudal landscape. So the sooner I’m introduced to the more mellow mediæval buildings the better.�
In Hilary Pierce the astonishment had given place to an ardour bordering on ecstasy.