He was a little man who sat huddled in his high-backed chair as if his backbone was not strong enough to support his frame upright. His crop of faded yellow hair was now almost white, and stood up like a hedge above a narrow forehead. But by far the most striking thing about him was the flesh-coloured plate with which clever doctors had repaired a war-mutilated face which must otherwise have been a horror too terrible to think upon. From where he sat, perhaps some fourteen feet away, Abbershaw could only just detect it, so skilfully was it fashioned. It was shaped roughly like a one-sided half-mask and covered almost all the top right-hand side of his face, and through it the Colonel’s grey-green eyes peered out shrewd and interested at the tableful of chattering young people.
George looked away hastily. For a moment his curiosity had overcome his sense of delicacy, and a wave of embarrassment passed over him as he realized that the little grey-green eyes had rested upon him for an instant and had found him eyeing the plate.
He turned to Meggie with a faint twinge of unwanted colour in his round cherubic face, and was a little disconcerted to find her looking at him, a hint of a smile on her lips and a curious brightness in her intelligent, dark-brown eyes. Just for a moment he had the uncomfortable impression that she was laughing at him.
He looked at her suspiciously, but she was no longer smiling, and when she spoke there was no amusement or superiority in her tone.
‘Isn’t it a marvellous house?’ she said.
He nodded.
‘Wonderful,’ he agreed. ‘Very old, I should say. But it’s very lonely,’ he added, his practical nature coming out in spite of himself. ‘Probably most inconvenient . . . I’m glad it’s not mine.’
The girl laughed softly.
‘Unromantic soul,’ she said.
Abbershaw looked at her and reddened and coughed and changed the conversation.