“I doubt it, my dear. But he'll be foolish if he doesn't, won't he?”
“I don't care for widows myself.”
“I presume not.” Winifred laughed comprehendingly.
“How old is she?”
“Twenty-eight, I believe—though she doesn't look it.”
“Doesn't look it! She looks a lot more.”
Winifred laughed still, quietly. Although Pauline undoubtedly had the advantage of Ellen in years, her fair-haired, blue-eyed, somewhat sumptuous beauty was not of so youthful a type as the darker colouring and slenderer outlines of Martha's sister.
The man at the wheel of the brown car lifted his leather cap as the women came out, but he left all the bestowal of them to the other men. Miss Hempstead asked to be allowed to sit beside the driver, but Macauley vowed that on the first long run of his new machine he himself should occupy that post of honour and interest.
“Coming back, then,” insisted the girl, and Macauley agreed reluctantly. Burns made no comment, but applied himself to his task—not only then, but also for every minute of the seventy-five miles to their destination.
“He might as well be a hired chauffeur,” complained Miss Hempstead when, during a stop of ten minutes on account of a switching freight train, she had leaned forward and attempted in vain to carry on a conversation with Burns. “That abstracted mood of his—is there any breaking into it?”