“I shouldn’t wait,” I said decidedly.
“Why not?” he asked with a touch of resentment, as if he had guessed something of my mistrust of Brenda.
“All very well, in a way, for you,” I explained. “But think what an awful time she’d have, with all of them trying to nag her into a marriage with young Turnbull, or somebody of that kind.”
“He isn’t so bad as some of ’em,” Banks said, evading the main issue. “She’d never marry him though. She knows him too well, for one thing. He’s been scouring the county in a dog-cart all the morning—went to Hurley to make inquiries before breakfast, and all over the place afterwards. John’s been telling me. He heard ’em talking when young Turnbull turned up at tea-time. He’s got guts all right, that fellow. I believe he’d play the game fair enough if they tried to make her marry him. Besides, as I said, she’d never do it.”
“I don’t suppose she would,” I said, humouring him—it was no part of my plan to disturb his perfect faith in Brenda—“I only said that she’d have a rotten bad time during those thirteen months.”
“Well, we’ve got to leave that to her, haven’t we?” Banks returned.
I thought not, but I judged it more tactful to keep my opinion to myself.
“We shall be quite safe in doing that,” I said as we turned into the back premises of the Home Farm.
Banks had forgotten about my suit-case, and I bore the burden of it, flauntingly, up the hill. Racquet followed us with an air of conscious humility.
And it was Racquet that Anne first addressed when she met us at the door of the house.