Then Elizabeth thought she must be going, as she had to make a call in Marshaven—she did not say that the call was upon the carpenter—and Andy said he would walk part of the way with her, because he was due to lunch on the sands with Mrs. Thorpe, who had arrived with an overflowing dog-cart at 12.30.
But Elizabeth said that the call was exactly in the opposite direction to the sands, and that she could not, and would not, separate Andy from his new-found relatives, so they all walked together to the dip in the sand-hills whence Mrs. Thorpe was plainly visible, large and black like a derelict buoy that had been thrown upon the shore, with other members of the congregation scattered near.
So the ladies stood in a group to say farewell—Mrs. Dixon, tight about the figure and curly about the head, as she had been from Andy’s very earliest recollections of her, with a perennial purple dusting of powder on her face—, Irene, very like her mother, only willowy instead of tight—and Phyllis more willowy still. Both girls had an indescribable air of possessing more neck and more eyes and more hair than other people, though of course this could not have been the case, and it was only an optical delusion.
Andy really felt very proud of them now the first awkwardness of meeting was over, and he thought Elizabeth and the girls would get on splendidly together.
“You’re sure to meet again,” he said encouragingly. “I hope my aunt and cousins will come to stay with me.”
“Oh—a bachelor’s household—and three women——” smiled Mrs. Dixon, shaking her head. “But we shall often go over. You will get quite tired of us in the neighbourhood, Miss Atterton.”
Then the Webster girls went off in one direction, while Elizabeth took another, thinking how pleased Mr. Kirke would be if he could only get his dancing class to willow like that; and Andy plodded down the soft sand in the full sun to Mrs. Thorpe, realising, as he had not done before, that he had injured his damaged arm further by the coco-nut shying, and that it was beginning to be exceedingly uncomfortable.
After lunch there were games to be started for the children and races to be run for prizes, and no time at all could be had for dwelling on a certain high moment that shone in a blending glory of blue and yellow at the back of Andy’s mind. At five o’clock followed a meat tea in the bare, high room, where some of the young men were late owing to a travelling circus which had put up its tent for a couple of performances. And as everybody filed out into the open air afterwards, very hot, and exuding ham fat quite visibly, young Sam Petch came up to Andy with an air of mysterious importance.
“Could I have a word, sir, in private?” he said, shading his mouth with his hand.
“What? Anything wrong?” said Andy, sharply alert—no longer a jolly boy but a leader with precious human lives under his care—something of what he might become shining clear and hard through the mists of youth.