"We had tea with him in his garden one afternoon."
"One afternoon ..." she murmured again. "How does Jennie spend most of her time?"
"I've been laid up in bed."
"Of course," she nodded. Apparently she passed it as a good man's answer, as men's answers go.
But my own question she did not appear to dream of answering. Except to compare it with another man's similar question she might not have heard it. Nor had I asked that question only as the solution of an otherwise insoluble problem. Happy I, could I have taken her into my arms there and then. So I waited, my eyes in the shadow of her panama, while she continued to look far away.
Then, "I see," she said yet once more. "Of course I ought to have known in the tent."
"In the tent?"
"The bathing-tent. She could hardly bear to share it with me. But she let me have the little stool, and untied a knot for me, and carried my wet things home."
"Madge Aird's daughter wouldn't behave altogether too unlike a lady."
"Madge Aird's daughter's a woman," she replied.