"The woman tempted me!" was all he said; and Roy, hopelessly mystified, wondered how he could possibly know. It was very clever of him. But Aunt Jane seemed shocked.
"Nevil, be quiet!" she commanded in a crisp undertone; and Roy, simply hating her, pulled out his watch.
"We've got to hurry, Daddy. Mother said 'not later than half-past.' And it is later."
"Scoot, then. She'll be anxious because of the storm."
But though Roy, grasping Tara's hand, faithfully hurried ahead because of mother, he managed to keep just within earshot; and he listened shamelessly, because of Aunt Jane. You couldn't trust her. She didn't play fair. She would bite you behind your back. That's the kind of woman she was.
And this is what he heard.
"Nevil, it's perfectly disgraceful. Letting them run wild like that; damaging the trees and scaring the birds."
She meant the pheasants of course. No other winged beings were sacred in her eyes.
"Sorry, old girl. But they appear to survive it." (The cool good-humour of his father's tone was balm to Roy's heart.) "And frankly, with us, if it's a case of the children or the birds, the children win, hands down."
Aunt Jane snorted. You could call it nothing else. It was a sound peculiarly her own, and it implied unutterable things. Roy would have gloried had he known what a score for his father was that delicately implied identity with his wife.