“Gad, it’s good to see fields again!” he said. Presently he glanced at the watch on his wrist.
“Nearly time to turn, don’t you think?” he said. “I don’t want Stella to be waiting long.”
“Very soon,” said Mr. Linton. “Just a little more country air. The chauffeur has his orders: I won’t keep you much longer.”
He racked his brains anxiously for a moment, and then plunged into a story of Australia—a story in which bushrangers, blacks and bushfires mingled so amazingly that it was impossible not to listen to it. Having once secured his hapless guest’s attention, he managed to leave the agony of invention and to slide gracefully to cattle-mustering, about which it was not necessary to invent anything. Major Hunt became interested, and asked a few questions; and they were deep in a comparison of the ways of handling cattle on an Australian run and a Texan ranch, when the car suddenly turned in at a pair of big iron gates and whirled up a drive fringed with trees. Major Hunt broke off in the middle of a sentence.
“Hallo! Where are we going?”
“I have to stop at a house here for an instant,” said Mr. Linton. “Just a moment; I won’t keep you.”
Major Hunt frowned. He was tired; the car was wonderfully comfortable, but the rush through the keen air was wearying to a semi-invalid, and he was conscious of a feeling of suppressed irritation. He wanted to be home. The thought of the hard little sofa in the London flat suddenly became tempting—he could lie there and talk to the children, and watch Stella moving about. Now they were miles into the country—long miles that must be covered again before he was back in Bloomsbury. He bit his lips to restrain words that might not seem courteous.
“I should really be very grateful if——”
He stopped. The car had turned into a side-avenue—he caught a glimpse of a big, many-gabled house away to the right. Then they turned a corner, and the car came to a standstill with her bonnet almost poking into a great clump of rhododendrons. There was a thatched cottage beside them. And round the corner tore a small boy in a sailor suit, with his face alight with a very ecstasy of welcome.
“Daddy! Oh, Daddy!”