“I’m frightfully thirsty,” she remarked.
“Come in and have some lemonade,” he told her. “You don’t deserve any for interrupting my work.”
“You ought not to be working on this hot day,” she said with decision, “and I am Providence in disguise, come to save you from a horrid headache.”
“You are more Fate than Providence,” Philip said laughing, “to more than one, I suspect. But come in! Davis makes delicious lemonade. It is kept in a refrigerator.”
Miss Phyllis made her way round the bungalow, and was soon in Philip’s cool sitting-room, and making straight for the mirror, arranged her hair, while she asked, with a pretty blush, which she saw reflected in the glass: “Have you a letter from my husband for me?”
“I? How should I have one?” demanded the astonished young man.
“You see, I told Charlie to send my letters to you,” she answered demurely.
“You have made me an accomplice in your crime, then, have you?” he remarked, as he gathered up the sheets of his manuscript. “I shall get into serious trouble with the Colonel. It will all come out, you know, about this marriage when the vicar comes back and looks at the register.”
Phyllis laughed.
“The vicar is not coming back for ages,” she said; “and another strange man is taking duty now; and heaps of other people are getting married at that church; and my name is quite a common one; and visitors come here often to get married; and—can’t you see, silly! it is most unlikely that that particular entry will get noticed? No one we know saw us married. The witnesses were friends of Charlie’s, and were soldiers, and soldiers never break their word. Oh! do ask for the lemonade!”