Marian jumped, and he caught and steadied her.
"Now you're all right," he said. "You'd better go down first."
In another moment or two he was on the ground beside her, looking down at her with a smile. He was about six feet high, she thought, with queer-looking eyes and curly brown hair and a skin like a gipsy's.
"Well, what are you doing here," he asked, "climbing all alone?"
Marian told him about her party, and how she had had to put it off. "And it'll be seven or eight weeks," she said, "before Cuthbert's well again, so that I shan't have one at all."
"Yes, I see," he said. "That's jolly bad luck. What about having some tea with me?"
Marian looked at him a little doubtfully.
"But where do you live?" she asked. "Do you live near here?"
"Well, just at present," he said, "I'm staying with Lord Barrington. But I have a flask in my pocket full of hot tea, and I stole some cakes before I came out."
So they sat down together between the roots of the elm-tree, and the sun poured down upon them, almost as if it had been summer.