Upon second thoughts, he decided finally that he was leaping to unwarrantable conclusions. She would have read a love-letter alone in her room. And she was incapable of deceit.
Still, her blush worried him, and the artless avowal that Lionel had written to her first. Yes, yes; something might come of this. A great joy, perhaps a great sorrow. One conviction troubled him. Sir Geoffrey would make himself intolerably unpleasant.
Meanwhile, Joyce’s blush lingered upon her cheeks. Her father’s hasty exit disturbed her. She was quite aware of what she had done, of the thoughts which her indiscreet words must have provoked. She wondered if she could allay such thoughts by showing him the letter. It was a jolly letter, a sincere reflection of the writer, so that it seemed to be the spoken rather than the written word. It might have been dashed off by one subaltern to another. Joyce had half a dozen such epistles upstairs. It may be added here that no love passages, in the literal sense, had taken place between these two correspondents.
But—she had blushed.
And she was the first to be told that he was coming home.
Joyce put away the letter with the others, and set forth on her common round. Such as it was, it sufficed her. She held her head high, and little of interest escaped her brown eyes. Town girls would have pitied her. She pitied them. Not to know the names of birds and flowers and butterflies, to be detached from interest in humbler neighbours, to be denied the privilege of small ministrations, must surely take from life much of the joy in living. Her sense of the present, so vivid and acute, her happy ignorance of life outside her tiny circle, prevented her from traffics, voyages and discoveries into the future.
Beside the river, she dawdled a little, having marked down several trout which might, later on, be captured by a Green Jacket. She hoped that Lionel would not miss the big May-fly rise in June. If he left India at once he would arrive in the nick of time. She recalled his tremendous triumph beneath the bridge, a thirteen pounder caught with a lump of raw beef. The Field had a paragraph about it. He was a boy of sixteen at the time, and she a fat child of ten. She had scampered at his bidding to the Pomfret Arms to get a landing net.
Halfway down the village she met Bonsor, who tried to escape from her. He “bobbed”—the Squire’s descriptive word—when she mentioned the chancel. And he evaded searching questions concerning the thatching of certain cottages. Joyce inquired politely after the Squire, and learned that he was furious because a local sanitary inspector had condemned some pigsties. Bonsor speculated vaguely as to the future of a world where such interference was possible, and then went his solitary way, grumbling and growling. Joyce wondered why the Squire employed Bonsor. Her father scrapped him as hopelessly out of touch with modern conditions. But Bonsor, although a Hampshire man, had married in Nether Applewhite. He had become, accordingly, one of Sir Geoffrey’s people. The Squire would never scrap him.
By noon, she had reached the Hall. As she approached the front door she saw Lady Pomfret busily engaged on the lawn clipping obtruding twigs from a topiary group of hen and chickens cunningly fashioned out of box. Her delight and satisfaction in such tiny accessories to a great place appealed deeply to Joyce, constrained, as she was, to find her pleasure in similar insignificant things. Lady Pomfret kissed her, and at touch of her lips the girl guessed that the great news had reached the mother.
“Lionel is coming home,” said Lady Pomfret. “I believe, my dear, that I am the happiest woman in England.”