“Pat! We didn’t expect you until to-morrow.”
“I know, but I suddenly got fed up with London. I hope I haven’t put the town band out by coming so soon, but I just had to come.”
She came striding up the steps and gave Claudia a hug.
“Bless you, my children. Paton, I shall be in tremendous form to-morrow. I feel it coming on. Directly I got on the boat I wanted to drive off from the head of the gangway, only it would be sure to have been a lost ball.... I lost five last week. I think they were winged angels masquerading as golf-balls. How’s Gilbert? Billie sends his forlorn love. He’s as mournful as a Chinese idol. Do you know where I’m supposed to hang myself up?”
Claudia, who had arranged for her room on the morrow, went ahead into the hotel, Colin and Pat following after. She could not help hearing a hasty whisper of, “Paton, I’ve got lots of things to tell you. Just had to see you. Everything is going to be all right, and I’m so happy.”
So her suspicions were correct. Colin and Pat were in love with one another. Pat “just had to see him.” What was that but love? Only love can drive with such impatience.
“I hope it’s a pretty long bed,” she could hear Pat chattering. “I went to stay at an hotel once, and we took it in turns to rest, my top half and my lower half. I’d like to sleep all at once, if possible.”
Colin laughed. He was always on very cheery terms with Patricia, and she with him. It was she, Claudia remembered, who had once so highly extolled Paton as a possible husband. At that time she had not appeared to have any penchant for him. But sometimes the knowledge of her love comes suddenly to a young girl. Perhaps it had come suddenly to Pat. And she would make him a very nice wife. She was loyal to the core, and she would believe in him. She would fight for him, if necessary, through thick and thin, the bigger the fight the more she would like it. She would never quite understand one side of him, perhaps, but maybe her steady cheeriness was what he needed. How often she had heard it said that like should not seek like in marriage. She remembered someone had said, “In love they who resemble, separate.” Pat was lucky, and if she felt a little twinge of jealousy—well, it was the first symptoms of the soured old woman period she had been envisaging. She would presently look on all young couples in the same way.
“So your sister has arrived,” she heard Mr. Littleton say, as she stood musing in the hall. “She hasn’t brought good weather with her.”