“He was fourteen years old on the sixth of last June.”
“Eh, but that’s grand.” She clapped her hands delightedly. “I guessed him tiv a week or two. We reckoned his birthday as a twel’month afore we found him, and that was June the eighteenth. And what’s his right neäm?”
“He was christened after me and after his mother’s family. His name is Reginald Ingram Grant.”
“May I ask who in the world you are talking about?” interposed the perplexed vicar.
“Wheä? Why, oor Martin!” cried Martha. “He’s a gentleman born, God bless him!”
“And, what is much more important, Mrs. Bolland, he is a gentleman bred,” said the colonel.
The scene in the kitchen of the White House had been too dramatic that some hint of it should not reach the village that night. Soon all Elmsdale knew that the mystery of Martin’s parentage had been solved, and great was the awe of the boy’s playmates when they heard that his father was a “real live colonel i’ t’ army.” A garbled version of the story came to Mr. Beckett-Smythe’s ears, and he called on Colonel Grant at the “Black Lion” next day.
He arrived in state, in a new Mercedes car, handled by a chauffeur replica of Fritz Bauer. Beckett-Smythe had hardly mastered his surprise at the colonel’s confirmation of that which he had regarded as “an incredible yarn” when Mrs. Saumarez drove up. She, too, recalling the message brought by Martin from her husband’s comrade-in-arms, came to verify the strange tale told by the Misses Walker. Angèle accompanied her, and the girl’s eyes shot lightning at Martin, who was on the point of guiding his father to the moor when Mr. Beckett-Smythe put in an appearance.
The lawyer had departed for London by the morning train; the three older people and the two youngsters gathered in the room thus set at liberty, Mrs. Atkinson having remodeled it into a sitting-room for the colonel’s use.