He raised his hat and hurried off, afraid to trust himself.
Just as he departed, Madeline and Theo, who had been for a long time hanging around, in hopes of being introduced to some officers, ventured to come up, and found themselves welcomed by Miss Ayres with quite unwonted cordiality.
"Oh, do come here! Miss Lutwyche is your cousin, isn't she?" she cried. "You must be introduced to an old friend of hers!"
The girls listened spellbound to the piquant story of the presence in England of a Boer boy who was Millie's brother. "A regular, sulky Boer," giggled Sybil, "who only speaks very broken English."
They looked at each other.
"Why," said Madeline, "then I expect the Major could tell us all about Millie before she came to England—what we have always wanted to know—how she got her arm broken, and so on."
"I can tell you that, certainly. She broke her arm scrambling out through a skylight to meet her lover, when her stepmother had locked her in."
"That we can easily believe," cried Theo. "Father sent her away from the Vicarage for that very same thing—getting out of her bedroom window at night! And then she tried to fix the blame on Gwen."
Sybil Ayres listened with eyes starting from her head.
"Do you suppose Mr. Burmester knows all this?" she cried.