"How did it go off?"
"Oh, quite well. We knew our parts, anyway."
"I think the village will enjoy it."
"Anyway, it's never very critical, is it? And it loves a melodrama."
"Yes. I wonder if father knows you're here. He said he'd come straight back. Perhaps I'd better go and find him."
"Oh, let me go, Miss Greene," said one of the youths ardently.
"Well, I don't know whether you'd find the place. It's a shed in the garden that he uses. We use half as a dark-room and half as a coal-cellar."
"I'll go——"
He stopped. A nightmare sound, as discordant as it was ear-splitting, filled the room. Miss Greene sank back into her chair, suddenly white. One of the young men let a cup of tea fall neatly from his fingers on to the floor and there crash into fragments. The young lady visitor emitted a scream that would have done credit to a factory siren. Then at the open French window appeared a small boy holding a bugle, purple-faced with the effort of his performance.
One of the young men was the first to recover speech. He stepped away from the broken crockery on the floor as if to disclaim all responsibility for it and said sternly: