"I hardly know myself," Lilly answered, blushing. "I just feel as if to-day were a festival."
Anna looked at her sideways, then, clearly emphasising every word, she said, "I really might make a festival of it, and visit a friend in the town. But the colonel being away, I don't know whether ..."
Lilly started so violently that for a moment she could not recover her breath. Then she pulled herself together tactfully, and urged her companion to go. She had not had a day off all the summer. She lived like a prisoner, and must sorely need a holiday.
Anna nodded meditatively, and the fixed glassy stare that Lilly did not like came into her eyes.
At the midday meal, which the two ladies took alone to-day, she was still undecided, but directly it was over she ordered the carriage and drove off without a word. Lilly, who, instead of resting, had been watching from the upstairs landing, now flew to the pea-shooter. The dense foliage of the Virginian creeper still so completely shut her in that he could not catch a glimpse of her. But she saw him as he sat at the open window frowning over his book.
"My good influence!" she thought triumphantly; and it seemed almost a pity to decoy him away from his improving occupation.
The steward and book-keeper were pacing up and down, not far from the house, smoking their Sunday afternoon cigar; so it was necessary to be more cautious than usual.
The paper pellet that conveyed her message hit him on the forehead and rebounded on to the grass outside. So well had he himself in hand that he did not so much as raise his eyes to show he understood, but a few minutes later he let his book fall out of the window, as if by accident, and rose indifferently to pick it up.
Half an hour afterwards they met behind the carp-pond. He had on a new black-and-white check suit similar to the fateful one worn by the foreigner that night in the railway carriage.
"You are much too fine for me to-day," joked Lilly. "I would rather not be seen with you."