“I was but playing the game you told me to play,” you could fancy him murmuring. Nevertheless, perceiving that the game was indubitably at an end, he indulged in something very akin to a shake of his head, and retired disconsolate whence he had come.
“Oh, thank you,” breathed the lady in white fervently. “Boys, thank—” she paused. “This gentleman” savours too largely of the shop-walker; the word has long since lost its rightful meaning. “Our preserver” smacks of the pedant.
“My name is John Mortimer,” announced John, with one of his inimitable smiles.
“Mr. Mortimer,” she concluded, the word supplied. “I am Rosamund Delancey, and this—” she indicated the whilom champion, “is Antony, and this is Michael. It was very good of you to come to our rescue.”
John murmured the usual polite formula. For the life of him he could find no original observation to make.
“Possibly,” continued Rosamund, half-meditative, a trifle rueful, “the goat intended mere play. But as Biddy, our old nurse, often used to say—and still does, for that matter—‘There’s play and play, and if one of the parties ceases to be liking it, it will be no play at all.’” The little laugh in her eyes found reflection in John’s.
“A very sound maxim,” quoth he. And inwardly he found himself ejaculating, “What an adorable voice, what an altogether flexible, musical and charming voice.”
Rosamund was looking down the heather-covered slope. At the further side, a quarter of a mile or so away, was a hedge, and in the hedge a gate. Beyond the gate was a lane, which, after a series of turns, would lead one eventually to the village and Delancey Castle. This latter, it is perhaps somewhat obvious to remark, was her goal, and the way across the heather towards the gate by far the nearest route to it. Yet how attempt that route with the black and white goat still at large adown the hill, eating sprays of heather—or what appeared to be sprays of heather—in a deceitfully placid and amicable manner?
“I wonder if that goat—” she began, her eyes vaguely troubled, her brow slightly puckered.
“Which way do you want to go?” demanded John promptly, the promptitude mingled with a nice degree of deferential courtesy,—the courtesy quite apparent, the deference a tiny subtle flavour.