A day passed. John Severn had come. He was to stay with the Fieldings for the last weeks of his leave. He had followed Adeline from the hot terrace to the cool library. When she wanted the sun again he would follow her out.
Robert and Colin were down at the Manor Farm. Eliot was in the schoolroom, reading.
Jerrold and Anne sat together on the grass under the beech trees, alone.
They had got over the shock of the first encounter, when they met at arms' length, not kissing, but each remembering, shyly, that they used to kiss. If they had not got over the "difference," the change of Anne from a child to a big girl, of Jerrold from a big boy to a man's height and a man's voice, it was because, in some obscure way, that difference fascinated them. The great thing was that underneath it they were both, as Anne said, "the same."
"I don't know what I'd have done, Jerrold, if you hadn't been."
"You might have known I would be."
"I did know."
"I say, what a thundering lot of hair you've got. I like it."
"Do you like what Auntie Adeline calls my new nose?"
"Awfully."