XXII
FORELAND FARMS
Toward three o’clock on the following afternoon the sun opened up like a searchlight through the veil of rain, dissolving it to a golden haze which gradually grew thinner and thinner, revealing glimpses of rolling country against a horizon of low mountains.
About the same time the covered station wagon turned in between the white gates of Foreland Farms, proceeded at a smart trot up the drive, and stopped under a dripping porte-cochère, where a smiling servant stood waiting to lift out the luggage.
A trim looking man of forty odd, in soft shirt and fawn coloured knickers, and wearing a monocle in his right eye and a flower in his buttonhole, came out on the porch as Barres and his guests descended.
“Well, Garry,” he said, “I’m glad you’re home at last! But you’re rather late for the fishing.” And to Westmore:
“How are you, Jim? Jolly to have you back! But I regret to inform you that the fishing is very poor just now.”
His son, who stood an inch or two taller than his debonaire parent, passed one arm around his shoulders and patted them affectionately while the easy presentations were concluded.
At the same moment two women, beautifully mounted 293 and very wet, galloped up to the porch and welcomed Garry’s guests from their saddles in the pleasant, informal, incurious manner characteristic of Foreland Farm folk—a manner which seemed too amiably certain of itself to feel responsibility for anybody or anything else.
Easy, unconcerned, slender and clean-built women these—Mrs. Reginald Barres, Garry’s mother, and her daughter, Lee. And in their smart, rain-wet riding clothes they might easily have been sisters, with a few years’ difference between them, so agreeably had Time behaved toward Mrs. Barres, so closely her fair-haired, fair-skinned daughter resembled her.