“I get about enough to hear things!” Holworthy retorted with unusual acerbity. “Your crowd here at Greenlea is no different from any other small community of normal people thrown together intimately under the abnormal conditions created by too much money and not enough to do. I don’t mean you two, but look around you. This Julie Brewster of whom Leila spoke just now; she is Dick Brewster’s wife, isn’t she? I don’t discuss women as a rule, but she’s going it rather strong with young Mattison. Dick’s not a fool; he’ll either blow up some day or find somebody’s else wife to listen to his tale of woe and hand out the sympathy. That is merely a case in point.”
“And just before your arrival, Leila was bemoaning the fact that you’d missed domestic happiness!”
“Was she? Well, there are different kinds of happiness in this world, you know; perhaps I’ve found mine in just looking on.” He rose, “I’ll get on down to the station now, old man. No, don’t rout out Barker; I’d rather walk.”
“I’ll stroll down with you, then.” Storm paused to light a cigarette, then followed his guest down the veranda steps. He shrank from facing Leila again that night; he would wait until the morning, and perhaps later she would explain. Perhaps the explanation of her prevarication lay in the fact of George’s presence; whatever her errand, she might not have cared to discuss it before him. As this solution presented itself to his mind Storm grasped at it eagerly. That was it, of course! What a fool he had been to worry, to doubt her! He could have laughed aloud in sheer relief.
“This is a great little place you have out here, Norman.” Holworthy halted at the gate to glance back at the house outlined in the moonlight. “I don’t wonder you’re proud of it. The grounds are perfect, too; that little corner there, where the hill dips down and the trout stream runs through, couldn’t have been laid out better if you had planned it.”
“It wouldn’t be a little corner if that old rascal Jaffray would sell me that stretch of land which cuts into mine, confound him!” Storm plunged with renewed zest into a topic ever rankling with him. “I’ve tried everything to force his hand, but the scoundrel hangs on to it through nothing in the world but blasted perversity! I tell you, George, it spoils the whole place for me sometimes, and I feel like selling out!”
“Leave all this after the years you and Leila have put in beautifying it because you can’t have an extra bit that belongs to someone else?” Holworthy shook his head. “Don’t be a fool, Norman! If you can only get another head gardener as good as MacWhirter was——”
“I’ll have MacWhirter himself back in a month,” Storm interrupted. “Didn’t Leila tell you? She saw him yesterday at the Base Hospital. He has lost a leg, but he’ll stump around as well as ever on an artificial one, and if he had to be wheeled about in a chair Leila wouldn’t hear of not having him back. She is the most loyal little soul in the world.”
“Of course she is!” Holworthy assented hastily. “You’re the luckiest man living, Norman, and she is the best of women!”
He paused abruptly, and when he spoke again there was an odd, constrained note in his usually placid tones.