She went hot all over as she suddenly realised that Charlie's letter must have been a birthday letter for Reggie. She distinctly remembered Charlie's words,
"It will reach Scotland on Monday morning."
Charlie might have reminded her!
Hastily now she gathered her writing materials and wrote Reggie his long delayed birthday letter, and in her haste and regret she forgot all about her casual on-the-top-of-things style, and though the letter was very short it was just such a letter as she had written him before these new ideas came into her head. "I am rushing off to a picnic with the Stacey people, so cannot write more," she ended up. "We are going to the Roman Hill. Do you remember how we went there last year and what a jolly time we had?"
Simple words—and yet Reggie treasured them like gold-dust.
Gertrude posted her letter on her way to the Stacey's house and she felt vaguely relieved when it slipped from her fingers into the chasm of the red pillar box. She felt that now she could enjoy herself in peace.
She was the most popular, the most sought-after girl at the picnic that afternoon; she was never short of a cavalier to wait on her lightest behest; she was her prettiest, her most charming self. The American whispered to her that a picnic without her would be a desolation and he had half a mind to stop another week at his aunt's—but Gertrude was not enjoying herself. From behind the gorse bushes, from between the moss-grown boulders, from beneath the dark foliage of the Scotch firs, there peeped at her a ghost.
She saw it everywhere. It was the ghost of Reggie Alston.
The next day was Sunday; always a quiet home day in the St. Olave's household, and in the little interval between tea-time and evening service the whole family were gathered in the cool shaded drawing-room, reading, or listening to Gertrude's description of the yesterday's picnic. Suddenly she broke in upon her own narrative with a question—
"Mother, how did you and father happen to meet and like one another?"