“Oh, nonsense; you can’t desert me at the last moment. If I can’t get that day off to run down to the New Forest, I shall have to go to a tiresome political luncheon party. Now, be patriotic, and serve your country by attending to the needs of one of her harassed Ministers.”
“I am always patriotic.”
“Then that settles it. I suppose I’d better not call for you. I’ll pick you up at South Kensington Station at 9.30. Peter will make an excellent chaperone, so you needn’t worry—good-bye”; and he rang off, leaving Hal to hang up the receiver, not quite sure whether she had been trapped or not.
At his end he moved across to a window with the smile still lingering on his face.
“Nothing like making up a woman’s mind for her,” he mused; “they’re all alike when they are on the edge of the stream, hesitating about the plunge. Give ’em a little shove, and once they’re in they swim out boldly enough. The trouble is, when they want to keep the whole river for themselves and will not brook any other swimmers.
“I expect I’m going to have a devil of a time with Gladys, and she’ll take a lot of squaring. Women are the deuce when you’re short of funds. But I can’t help being susceptible, and Hal has caught my fancy altogether. Dear little girl, I expect she’ll want a big shove yet before she’ll take the real plunge. But it’s interesting, by Jove! it’s interesting; and when she looks a veiled defiance at me with those candid, mischievous eyes of hers, I know I’ve got to win somehow.”
Hal went back to her work, feeling a little as if she had been swept off her feet; and she was not entirely without misgivings. The possible impropriety of going out alone with a man for the whole day did not trouble her, but the nature of the man, she was shrewd enough to perceive, was a doubtful point.
Of course she was perfectly aware that Aunt Judith, for instance, and Dudley, and probably her mother, had she been alive, would have been scandalised at such a proceeding; but then she had pluckily fended for herself so long, she did not consider she was any longer called upon to mould her actions according to their views. She belonged to the large army of women who have to spend so much of their time on office chairs that their comparatively few hours of pleasure have no room for the ordinary conventions that hem round the leisured, home-walled maiden.
If a treat offered, and it was reasonably within bounds, they took it and were thankful and gave no thought to the possibly uplifted hands of horror among possibly restricted relatives. She was one of those who enjoy the freedom of the American girl, without being of those who, unfortunately, often fall short of her level-headed characteristics; largely perhaps through those very uplifted hands which suggest harm, where harm otherwise might never have been thought of.
It was not, now, any suggestions born of uplifted hands that gave Hal that faint misgiving. It was that growing doubt concerning the nature of the man, and a consciousness that she was unduly pleased the treat was actually to take place—a growing consciousness that in spite of the doubt she cared more about seeing Sir Edwin Crathie than most men, with a like recognition that this might seriously endanger her own peace of mind.