“Never mind,” she said consolingly, “you’ve met me. That’s your reward for good conduct.”
They had arrived at the upper corner of the plaza where only the breadth of a street divided them from the green, tree-dotted sward, cut with walks and set forth in benches. Barclay, raising his hat and murmuring some conventional words of farewell, turned and left them, and the Colonel and his companion strolled across the road and over the grass toward a bench, behind which a clump of laurels grew shelteringly, a screen against the wind and fog.
“This is the most comfortable of all the benches,” said June artlessly as they sat down. “The laurels keep the wind off like a wall. Even on cold days, when the fog comes in, it’s a warm little corner.”
“You’ve been here before,” said the Colonel, looking at her out of the sides of his eyes.
A telltale color came into her cheeks, but the city and its ways were training her, and she managed to exclude confusion and consciousness from her face.
“Oh, yes,” she answered, “several times. I sometimes rest here after I’ve been taking a long walk.”
“That must be dull,” said her companion. “I can’t see anything cheerful in sitting on a park bench by yourself.”
He looked at her again. But his bungling masculine line of procedure was not of the kind to entrap even so untried a beginner. It made her smile a little, and then she looked down to hide the smile.
“Wasn’t it jolly that we met?” she said, stroking the satiny surface of her new jacket and presenting to his glance a non-committal profile. The Colonel knew her well enough by this time to realize that she intended neither to confess nor to be trapped into revelations of past occupancy of the bench. He returned to less intricate lines of converse.
“Who do you think’s to be here to-morrow?”