The Affair at the Inn

by Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin; Jane Helen Findlater; Mary Findlater; Allan McAulay

Miss Virginia kept up very pluckily for a long time, but she was dead tired and very cold and became more and more silent. It was about the most uncomfortable predicament I ever was in,—and with a girl on my hands, too, a thing I have hitherto always managed to avoid.

And then a thing happened that really I can't account for, and yet I suppose it has changed the whole affair, as far as I am concerned. I feel a perfect beast whenever I think of it, and I hope to goodness Miss Virginia knows nothing about it. We had come to an interminable hill, and I had been walking for about half an hour. Miss Virginia was totally silent now, and suddenly I saw that the reins had slipped from her hands. She was actually asleep, huddled up in my coat against the back of the chaise. It was beginning to rain again, and the incline being very gentle at that point, I felt I had to get in and hold an umbrella over the girl. I did, and a sudden jerk of the wheels sent her almost into my arms without waking her. Her head was on my shoulder, her cheek so close to mine. Of course I have heard fellows talk about kissing: I have always thought it a disgusting habit myself, and discouraged it, even in near relations. But now—now it seemed suddenly different—she seemed meant to be kissed—and by me—and well, I kissed her—that's the naked truth, and the moment I had done it I would have given worlds not to have done it, or else to have the right to do it again. A man is a man firstly, I suppose; but secondly, at least, he ought to be a gentleman. That's the thought that has been spinning in my head all night. Does Virginia suspect? I hope not—and yet I don't know.

We got home, of course, all right in the end, for the hotel turned up quite unexpectedly round a corner, with all the lights shining out across the moor.

N.B.—There has been the devil to pay with the motor and the old women.

CECILIA EVESHAM

I have always had an idea that events need a propelling hand every now and then. Somehow it seemed to me that afternoon at Widdington that Virginia and Sir Archibald were in need of my assistance, and I took a desperate resolution and helped them to the best of my power. This is what I did: I undertook to look after Mrs. MacGill and Mrs. Pomeroy in the motor if Sir Archibald drove Virginia home in the pony chaise; but not content with this, I deliberately sent them round by a road some five miles longer than the one we had come by. I happened to be speaking with the landlady about the roads, and she told me that there was another way back to Grey Tor, only that it was longer. The idea struck me, as the saying goes, 'all of a heap.'

'Sir Archibald,' I said, returning to the parlour, where they all sat, 'if you had seen the business I had to get Greytoria down that hill, you would hesitate more about getting her up it. But the landlady here tells us that if you go round by the lower road you avoid the hill, and it is only a little longer.'

'I don't believe in country people's distances,' he said, 'but I'll inquire.'

I turned back, as if by accident, into the bar, and leaned across the counter towards the landlady. She was a genial-looking old woman with a rollicking eye.