I can’t say he looked amiable, but at least he was polite, and I was so relieved that I bowed back with quite a broad smile. Mrs Maplestone looked at me more in sorrow than in anger. I suppose she was thinking, “So young and so unkind!” An hour later, from an upstairs window, I saw the car whizzing homewards along the road. It did not stop at our gate. I rather wished it would.

After that we were constantly meeting. There seemed a fate in it. If I darted into the post office to buy a penny stamp, he was there buying tobacco. (You do buy tobacco in village post offices!) If I cut across fields and sat on a stile to rest, he came whistling from the opposite direction, and I had to get up to let him pass. If in leaving the house I turned to the right, I met him advancing to the left. If I turned to the left, behold he was striding manfully to the right! Each meeting was the result of absolute chance, but Mistress Chance can play curious pranks at times, and it really seemed as though she was taking a mischievous delight in bringing about these unwished-for encounters. We always bow ceremoniously to each other; he always frowns, and I always smile. Theoretically I am annoyed and indignant; but at the critical moment the comical side of the situation sweeps over me, and out flashes the smile before I can force it back. It is so absurd to see a big grown man sulking like a child! Quite a good thing he does not intend to marry. His wife would have a nerve-racking time.

Well, as I said before, three months have passed by. Spring has turned into summer, and every day the garden brings fresh, delightful surprises. Uninteresting green sprouts burst into unexpected bloom; the rock garden is a blaze of purple and gold; blackened stems of creepers have disappeared beneath festoons of leaves and flowers.

Charmion and I wear muslin dresses, and eat our meals in the arbour, and lie in hammocks in the little orchard, and rejoice in every moment of the long sunshiny days. Down at the bottom of our hearts, I think we both have a feeling that this is just a little rest by the way. It won’t last; we don’t even wish it to last. Life is too strenuous to pass in a summer garden; but we needed a rest and it is very, very good for a change. We pack boxes of flowers and send them to the hospitals, and every Saturday afternoon we invite parties of working girls from the nearest towns. They arrive in weird garments, very loud as to colour, and befeathered as to hats, and the village worthies look askance at them, shrug their shoulders, and think small beer of us for entertaining such odd guests.

For three months our lives have been indeed the “annals of a quiet neighbourhood,” and then suddenly, last week, something happened!

I said suddenly—I might have said instantaneously, without any exaggeration. The position was this. Scene, a sloping roadway just outside the village area. The stage set with the three principal figures. Enter from left wing, General Underwood, reclining in his bath-chair, being taken for a short ride by his affectionate kinsman, Robert Maplestone. Enter from right wing, Evelyn Wastneys, bearing for home. So far, so good. A similar encounter has happened many times before, but this time the sight of my white-robed figure seemed to upset the Squire’s equanimity. He stopped the chair, and turned his head over his shoulder, looking backward over the road along which he had come. It afterwards transpired that the General’s valet had been left behind to finish some small duty, and was momentarily expected to follow. At that moment he did appear, and involuntarily Mr Maplestone lifted his hands to wave an imperious summons.

I have said that the road is sloping; just at this point it is very sloping indeed, therefore the bath-chair darted forward, and spun downward with incredible speed. I have a kaleidoscopic picture in my brain which seems to consist of a lot of waving arms—the poor General’s arms waving for help, the Squire’s arms sawing the air as he raced in pursuit, further back in the road the valet’s arms thrown to the sky in an agony of dismay, while down towards me, ever faster and faster, spun that runaway chair.

I had to stop it somehow! There was no one else to do it, so it was “up to me” to do my best. There was no time to be nervous, no time even to think. I stood braced in the middle of the road, and caught at the steering handle as it flashed by. My weight was light, and the General was heavy. I expected to have to hold hard, but what really happened was startling and unexpected, for the steering handle whirled straight round, struck me a severe blow on the arm, and—toppled me right over on to the foot of the chair! I sat down heavily on the General’s feet, and the front wheel tore whirling streamers from the bottom of my skirt. The chair swayed, jerked, slackened its speed; two strong hands stretched out and checked it still further; a second pair of hands gripped hold, and brought it to a stand.

Now came the moment when I ought to have been acclaimed, and overwhelmed with grateful acknowledgments as an heroic rescuer, who had risked her own life to save a feeble and suffering old man; but not at all! Quite the contrary! No sooner was his flight safely stopped than the General turned and roared at me with furious voice:—

“You sat on my feet! You are sitting on my feet!—I, with the gout! Get up! Get up!”