Mrs. Jervaise and Olive agreed warmly with that decision, and the three of them drew a little apart, discussing, I inferred, the means that were to be adopted for the limiting of the runaway, when she returned. But I was puzzled to know whether they were finally convinced of the truth of the theory they had so readily adopted. Were they deceiving, or trying very hard, indeed, to deceive themselves into the belief that the whole affair was nothing but a prank of Brenda’s? I saw that my casual suggestion had a general air of likelihood, but if I had been in their place, I should have demanded evidence before I drew much consolation from so unsupported a conclusion.
I joined young Turnbull.
“Good idea of yours, Melhuish,” Ronnie said.
Frank grunted.
“I’ve no sort of grounds for it, you know,” I explained. “It was only a casual suggestion.”
“Jolly convincing one, though,” Turnbull congratulated me. “So exactly the sort of thing she would do, isn’t it, Frank?”
“Shouldn’t have thought she’d have been gone so long,” Jervaise replied. He looked at me as he continued, “And how does it fit with that notion of ours about Miss Banks having expected her?”
“That was only a guess,” I argued.
“Better evidence for it than you had for your guess,” he returned, and we drifted into an indeterminate wrangle, each of us defending his own theory rather because he had had the glory of originating it than because either of us had, I think, the least faith in our explanations.
It was Ronnie who, picking up the thread of our deductions from the Home Farm interview in the course of our discussion, sought to reconcile us and our theories.