He smiled. “Why, yes! You told me so, this morning!”
She laughed, blushed faintly, and retorted: “I did not know how big until now, when I find myself on a level with you. You must know that in general I look over men’s heads.”
He could see that this must be so. She did not seem to him to be an inch too tall, but he realized that she was taller even than his sister, and built on more magnificent lines. Hitching her horse to the gate post, he said sympathetically: “It’s a trial, isn’t it? I feel it myself, and my sister tells me it has been the bane of her existence. Do you always ride unattended, Miss Stornaway?”
She had seated herself on the bench outside the tollhouse, under the fascia board, which bore, in staring black capitals, the name of Edward Brean. “Yes, invariably! Does it offend your sense of propriety? I am not precisely a schoolgirl, you know!”
“Oh, no!” he replied seriously, coming to sit down beside her. “I like you for it—if you don’t think it impertinent in me to tell you so. I’ve thought, ever since I came home, that there’s a deal too much propriety in England.”
She raised her brows. “Came home?”
“Yes. I’m a soldier—that is to say, I was one.”
“Were you in the Peninsula?” He nodded. “My brother was, too,” she said abruptly. “He was killed.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Where?”
“At Albuera. He was in the 7th.”