"I agree with Mollie," said Jerry, trying to look romantic, "I thought so first go-off, as soon as he said 'Miss Gordon'; there's a look—"
"If it's the look you think you've got on just now it's a fairly imbecile one," Dick interrupted scornfully. "Perhaps you are in love with Mollie!"
Mollie, who was rather tired, was leaning back against her pillows, her bandaged foot lying on the bed and the other foot swinging over the side. Her short, blue-serge skirt was at its shortest and made no pretence at hiding her serviceable blue knickers, from which emerged a pair of useful girl-guidish legs, suitably clad in black merino stockings and lace-up shoes. Her bobbed hair was for the moment rough and tumbled, and she still held her flags spread out on either side of her. No one could have looked less romantic, and they all three had to laugh at Dick's suggestion. He cheered up slightly.
"Anyhow—now perhaps we can find out a few things—what the blood was, and how rich the diamond-mine made them."
"And if Grizzel made her fortune in jam," Mollie added, "and if Hugh ever invented an aeroplane."
"He's in the R.A.F.," Jerry remarked, "we saw it on the card he gave us."
This reminder cheered Dick up still more. If his favourite aunt had the bad taste to throw over a promising football nephew for anything so wishy-washy as a lover, it was consoling to know that the wisher-washer might include an aeroplane. "Perhaps he'll take us up one of these days if we behave nicely about Aunt Polly-wolly-doodle," he said hopefully; "that is, if there really is anything in Mollie's tosh. He looks an aged old party to be turning somersaults in the air, I must say."
The welcome sound of the tea-bell put an end to their discussion, and soon Dick was drowning his sorrows in strawberries and cream. It was rather a bad—or good—sign that Aunt Mary and the mysterious Major Campbell were absent, but on the whole it was a relief. Only a somewhat preoccupied Grannie was there to attend to their wants. No one spoke very much. There was a slightly depressing atmosphere about that tea, so carefully prepared by the missing aunt. The place where she usually sat looked extraordinarily empty, much emptier, Mollie thought, than it did when her aunt merely happened to be out. As soon as tea was over the boys went off to visit the puppies again; Grannie, still inclined to be silent and absent-minded, sat down to her knitting; and Mollie, feeling somehow more lonely than she had done before the boys came, wandered into the deserted morning-room. She picked up a book she had been interested in yesterday, but it had lost its flavour and she soon laid it down and went over to the window, where she stood looking out at the wet garden. It was raining in earnest now, not heavily but steadily; little pools were collecting in the gravel, rose-petals were dropping in showers, and the flowers in the herbaceous borders were beginning to look as if they had had enough rain for the present and would welcome now a chance to dry themselves. Mollie opened the window wide and seated herself sideways on the sill, heedless of the raindrops that blew against her face and blouse. For a long time she stared out into the rain, seeing not the well-kept garden before her, but the cypress-bordered path in that other garden.
The sound of the clock striking made her turn her head and look indoors. The room looked dark and dull. Aunt Mary's work-basket stood open on the table, with her work lying where she had flung it down when she ran out to meet Mollie. The jig-saw puzzle was tidied away, and the sofa cushions sat in a prim row on the sofa, with nothing about them to show how often a kind hand had tucked them in behind a young invalid's back. The volume of Shakespeare still lay on a side-table, and reminded Mollie freshly of Prue's first visit.
"I am being sorry for myself," she thought, "and of all the useless things—! I will go upstairs and change my frock and tidy my hair, and then write to Mother. And when the boys come in we must find something to do. It is simply horrid of me to be moping round because dear Aunt Mary is happy, especially as it is the very thing I was keen on yesterday. I feel as if I lived in the middle of one of Hugh's shadow-clocks," she sighed as she went slowly upstairs, "with Yesterday and To-morrow going round me all the time, and my own shadow falling on them both." This poetic fancy rather pleased her, and she decided to put on her best evening frock and fasten her hair with a rose velvet bandeau.