“Hush—sh—sh!” breathed he, silencing the question on my lips.
“What’s the sport, Dicky?”
“She’s with him there, beyond the laurels; they are walking round,” he whispered. “Oh my! such fun! I have been peeping at ’em. He has his arm round her waist.”
Sure enough, at that moment they came into view—Mina and Captain Collinson. Dicky drew back into the shade, as did I. And I, to my very great astonishment, trod upon somebody else’s feet, who made, so to say, one of the laurels.
“It’s only I,” breathed Sam Jenkins. “I’m on the watch as well as Dicky. It looks like a case of two loviers, does it not?”
The “loviers” were parting. Captain Collinson held her hand between both his to give her his final whisper. Then Mina tripped lightly over the grass and stole in at the glass-doors of the garden-room, while the captain stalked round to the front-entrance and boldly rang, making believe he had only then arrived.
“Oh my, my!” repeated the enraptured Dicky, “won’t I have the pull of her now! She’d better tell tales of me again!”
“Is it a case, think you?” asked Sam of me, as we slowly followed in the wake of Mina.
“It looks like it,” I answered.
Janet was singing one of her charming songs, as we stole in at the glass-doors: “Blow, blow, thou wintry wind:” just as she used to sing it in that house in the years gone by. Her voice had not lost its sweetness. Mina stood near the piano now, a thoughtful look upon her flushed face.