The little maid was knocking at the door, and announcing that tea was ready, while Margot was still weaving her rose-coloured dreams. It was a cold douche in more ways than one, to return to the depressing atmosphere of the dining-room, but the meal itself was tempting and plentiful. Scones and toast, eggs and strawberry-jam, besides the solid flank of ham, and, better than all, plenty of delicious cream and fresh butter.
Margot poured out tea for herself and Ron, and, taking the hot-water-jug on her knee, warmed her numbed hands on it as she ate. For the first five or ten minutes no time was wasted in talking; then, the first pangs of hunger being appeased, the two young people began to compare impressions.
“Do you suppose this is the only sitting-room? Do you suppose we shall have to sit here in the evenings and when it rains? Fancy a long wet day, Ron, shining on horsehair chairs, with your feet on an oil-clothed floor, gazing at funeral cards! I should go to bed!”
“It wouldn’t be a bad idea. Rest cure, you know! If we are very energetic in fine weather, we may be glad of a rest; but there is another room. I caught sight of a sanctuary filled with woollen mats and wax flowers, with a real live piano in the corner. ‘The best parlour,’ I should say, and the pride of Mrs McNab’s heart. I don’t know if she will allow you to enter.”
“She will; but she won’t have a fire. It has been spring-cleaned, and has a waterfall of green paper in the grate—I can see it all!” Margot declared, with a shudder. She hugged the hot-water-jug still closer, and shivered expressively. “I shall be obliged to raid the kitchen—there’s nothing else for it!”
“You daren’t!”
Margot laughed derisively, but her answer was checked by the sudden appearance of a man’s figure pacing slowly past the window. Brother and sister sprang from their chairs, with a simultaneous impulse, rushed across the room, and crouched behind the moreen curtains. “Is it?” they queried breathlessly of each other—“Mr Elgood? Can it be?”
If it were Mr Elgood, he was certainly not imposing, so far as looks were concerned. A dumpy little man, of forty years or more, dressed in a baggy suit of grey tweed, with carpet slippers on his dumpy little feet. He had evidently started out of the inn to enjoy a smoke in the open air, sublimely unconscious of the scrutiny that was levelled upon him the while. His uncovered head showed a large bald patch, his face was round and of a cherubic serenity.
“I could twist him round like a teetotum!” whispered Margot, holding up a pert first finger and peering complacently.
“He looks terribly commonplace!” sighed Ronald disconsolately. “Not in the least the sort of man I expected.”