“Well, Frank, out for a breath of fresh air before turning in? Sorry you can’t join our march. Lord Torrington is just talking about your father.”
“Thanks, Uncle Lucius,” said Frank, “but I can’t walk. There’s a hammock chair in the corner. I’ll sit there for a while and smoke another cigarette.”
Sir Lucius and Lord Torrington walked briskly, turning each time they reached the edge of the grass and walking briskly back again. Frank realised that Priscilla, if she was to keep her appointment, must cross their track. He watched anxiously for her appearance. The stable clock struck ten. In the shadow of the verandah in front of the dining-room window Frank fancied he saw a moving figure. Sir Lucius and Lord Torrington crossed the lawn again. Half-way across they were exactly opposite the dining-room window, A few steps further on and the direct line between the window and a corner of the shrubbery lay behind them. Priscilla seized the most favourable moment for her passage. Just as the two men reached the point at which their backs were turned to the line of her crossing she darted forward. Half-way across she seemed to trip, hesitated for a moment and then ran on. Before the walkers reached their place of turning she was safe in a laurel bush beside Frank’s chair.
“My shoe,” she whispered. “It came off slap in the middle of the lawn. I always knew those were perfectly beastly shoes. It was Sylvia Courtney made me buy them, though I told her at the time they’d never stick on, and what good are shoes if they don’t. Now they are sure to see it; though perhaps they won’t. If they don’t I can make another dart and get it.”
To avoid all risk of the loss of the second shoe Priscilla took it off before she started. Lord Torrington and Sir Lucius crossed the lawn again. It seemed as if one or other of them must tread on the shoe which lay on their path; but they passed it by. Priscilla seized her chance, rushed to the middle of the lawn and returned again successfully. Then she and Frank retreated, for the sake of greater security, into the middle of the shrubbery.
“Everything’s all right,” said Priscilla. “I’ve got lots and lots of food stored away. I simply looted the dishes as they were brought out of the dining-room. Fried fish, a whole roast duck, three herrings’ roes on toast, half a caramel pudding—I squeezed it into an old jam pot—and several other things. We can start at any hour we like tomorrow and it won’t in the least matter whether Brannigan’s is open or not. What do you say to 6 a.m.?”
“I’m not going on the bay tomorrow.”
“You must. Why not?”
“Because I want to score off that old beast who sprained my ankle.”
The prefect in Frank had entirely disappeared. Two days of close companionship with Priscilla erased the marks made on his character by four long years of training at Haileybury. His respect for constituted authorities had vanished. The fact that Lord Torrington was Secretary of State for War did not weigh on him for an instant. He was, as indeed boys ought to be at seventeen years of age, a primitive barbarian. He was filled with a desire for revenge on the man who had insulted and injured him.