"They were ever so jolly; even Tony shouted."
At the lodge they met the Squire. Jan introduced Peter and explained that he had just come down for a few days' fishing and was staying at "The Green Hart." The Squire proffered advice as to the best flies and a warning that he must not hope for much sport. The Amber was a difficult river, very; and variable; and it had been a particularly dry June.
Peter bore up under this depressing intelligence and he and Jan walked on through warm, scented lanes to Wren's End; and Peter looked at Jan a good deal.
Those who happened to be in London during the season of 1914 will remember that it was a period of powder and paint and frankest touching-up of complexions. The young and pretty were blackened and whitened and reddened quite as crudely as the old and ugly. There was no attempt at concealment. The faces of many Mayfair ladies filled Peter with disrespectful astonishment. He had not been home for four years, and then nice girls didn't do that sort of thing—much.
Now one of Jan's best points was her complexion; it was so fair and fresh. The touch of sunburn, too, was becoming, for she didn't freckle.
Peter found himself positively thankful to behold a really clean face; a face, too, that just then positively beamed with warm welcome and frank pleasure.
A clean face; a cool, clean frock; kind, candid eyes and a gentle, sincere voice—yes, they were all there just as he remembered them, just as he had so often dreamt of them. Moreover, he decided there and then that the Georgian ladies knew what they were about when they powdered their hair—white hair, he thought, was extraordinarily becoming to a woman.
"You are looking better than when I was in Bombay. I think your leave must have done you good already," said the kind, friendly voice.
"I need a spell of country air, really to set me up," said Peter.
They had an hilarious tea with the children on the Wren's lawn, and the tamest of the robins hopped about on the step just to show that he didn't care a fig for any of them.