“Ah, there they are!” cried Herbert.
“No, there are three of them,” said Matthew, in disappointed tones.
“That’s the maid, carrying a reserve of wraps, you duffer! Don’t throw away your cigar. There’s Olive herself with a cigarette, if my eyes do not deceive me.”
But Matthew Strang’s cigar went out ere the two parties—sauntering more slowly than before they had become unconscious of each other—were startled to find themselves face to face. His heart was beating furiously as if he were really startled by the apparition of a queenly figure and a lovely flushed face on the background of the night. A smile danced in the eyes and parted the red lips with an expression of more eager welcome than had ever been accorded him in town; and there was a more intimate pressure in the clasp of the warm hand, subtly heralding a new phase in their friendship, in this disappearance of the conventional stage properties of the fashionable human scene, in this isolation amid the primitiveness of nature, and of a humanity simpler than their own; while Miss Regan’s cigarette and her frank laugh and hand-shake indicated less subtly, but no less pleasantly, the commencement of a semi-Bohemian artistic period which loomed more agreeably to Matthew than any of the periods Herbert had boasted of living in.
“Welcome to the Creamery,” said Olive, “or rather to the Ice-Creamery, as we’ve had to call it lately.”
“Then why don’t you put on your wraps?” said Matthew, anxiously.
“Oh, it’s comparatively tropical to-night, and we had to give Primitiva a pretext for accompanying us. This is Primitiva (née Rose) the ex-post.” The pretty lass made a courtesy. “She was the post, you know, when we first came. She used to bring letters from the post-office, which is near you, and our first acquaintance with the post was to find it in tears because it had lost a letter of ours. She had dropped it en route.”
“Was it an important letter?” asked Matthew.
“That is very nearly a bull, Mr. Strang,” replied Olive. “However, as the letter was picked up by a coast-guard, I am able to tell you it wasn’t of the slightest importance—merely a request from Mr. Harold Lavender to be allowed to dedicate his next book of poems to Nor. Still it might have been important; it might have contained a P.O.M.”
“Do you mean a poem or a post-office order?” laughed Mrs. Wyndwood, turning a flippant face towards Matthew’s, over which a cloud had come like that now entirely over the moon.