“Oh yes, I forgot to tell you that. I gave it to Mr. Dunstan, the butler. He says that the Dean opened it and read it. And then what d’you think the silly old thing said, Manfred?”
“You will have to get into the way of calling me Alfred,” he said calmly.
“Oh, bother!”
“Well, what did the reverend gentleman say?”
“Mr. Dunstan says that he just exclaimed, ‘I’m sorry the good fellow thinks it necessary to do that.’ So you needn’t have troubled after all. All the way to the Deanery I was saying to myself, ‘Mrs. Head—Polly Head. Polly Head—Mrs. Head.’ And no, it’s no good pretending that I like it, for I just don’t!”
“Then you’ll just have to do the other thing,” he said roughly. Still, though he spoke so disagreeably, he was yet in high good-humour. Two hours ago this information concerning Miss Haworth’s lover would have been of the utmost interest to him, and even now it was of value, as corroborating what Anna had already told him. Frau Bauer was going to be very useful to him. Alfred Head, for already he was thinking of himself by that name, felt that he had had a well-spent, as well as a pleasant, evening.
CHAPTER XIV
Had it not been for the contents of the envelope which she kept in the right-hand drawer of her writing-table, and which she sometimes took out surreptitiously, when neither her daughter nor old Anna were about, Mrs. Otway, as those early August days slipped by, might well have thought her farewell interview with Major Guthrie a dream.
For one thing there was nothing, positively nothing, in any of the daily papers over which she wasted so much time each morning, concerning the despatch of an Expeditionary Force to the Continent! Could Major Guthrie have been mistaken?