“All my people hunt,” said Adela. “It’s rather a bore, don’t you think, Mr. Sydenham?”
Talk like that!
Two days passed, during which Peter was either being bored to death in the company of Adela and Joan or also bored to death keeping aloof from them. He cycled to Ware with them, and Adela’s cycle had a change speed arrangement with a high gear of eighty-five that made it difficult to keep ahead of her. Beast!
And on the second evening she introduced a new card game, Demon Patience, a scrambling sort of game in which you piled on aces in the middle and cried “Stop!” as soon as your stack was out. It was one of those games, one of those inferior games, at which boys in their teens are not nearly as quick as girls, Peter discovered. But presently Joan began to pull ahead and beat Adela and Peter. The two girls began to play against each other as if his poor little spurts didn’t amount to anything. They certainly didn’t amount to very much.
Adela began to play with a sprawling eagerness. Her colour deepened; her manners deteriorated. She was tormented between ambition and admiration. When Joan had run her out for the third time, she cried, “Oh, Joan, you Wonderful Darling!”
And clutched and kissed her!...
All the other things might have been bearable if it had not been for this perpetual confabulating with Joan, this going off to whisper with Joan, this putting of arms round Joan’s neck, this whispering that was almost kissing Joan’s ear. One couldn’t have a moment with Joan. One couldn’t use Joan for the slightest thing. It would have been better if one hadn’t had a Joan.
On the mill-pond there was a boat that Joan and Peter were allowed to use. On the morning of the fifth day Joan found Peter hanging about in the hall.
“Joan.”
“Yes?”