"Never got there, Mummy," said Marjorie, and paused fatally.
"Didn't get there!" said Mrs. Pope. "That's worse than Theodore! Wouldn't the donkey go, poor dear?"
There was nothing to colour about, and yet Marjorie felt the warm flow in neck and cheek and brow. She threw extraordinary quantities of candour into her manner. "I had a romantic adventure," she said rather quietly. "I was going to tell you."
(Sensation.)
"You see it was like this," said Marjorie. "I ran against Mr. Trafford...."
She drank tea, and pulled herself together for a lively description of the wheel-locking and the subsequent conversation, a bright ridiculous account which made the affair happen by implication on the high road and not in a byeway, and was adorned with every facetious ornament that seemed likely to get a laugh from the children. But she talked rather fast, and she felt she forced the fun a little. However, it amused the children all right, and Theodore created a diversion by choking with his tea. From first to last Marjorie was extremely careful to avoid the affectionate scrutiny of her mother's eye. And had this lasted the whole afternoon? asked Mrs. Pope. "Oh, they'd talked for half-an-hour," said Marjorie, or more, and had driven back very slowly together. "He did all the talking. You saw what he was yesterday. And the donkeys seemed too happy together to tear them away."
"But what was it all about?" asked Daffy curious.
"He asked after you, Daffy, most affectionately," said Marjorie, and added, "several times." (Though Trafford had as a matter of fact displayed a quite remarkable disregard of all her family.)
"And," she went on, getting a plausible idea at last, "he explained all about aeroplanes. And all that sort of thing. Has Daddy gone to Wamping for some more cricket?..."
(But none of this was lost on Mrs. Pope.)