"You little idiot," Eleanor said. "You deserve to be killed. Don't you know that a driver doesn't see well coming into the avenue out of the sunlight?"
"Hullo! Hullo, Patrick! It's me! Ruth. How d'you do. I came to ride up with you. To the house, you know. Can I sit on your knee? There isn't very much room in that awful old car of Eleanor's, and I don't want to crush my dress. I hope you like my dress. It is put on specially for your coming home. You're very good-looking, aren't you? Am I what you expected?"
She waited for an answer to that, so Brat said that he hadn't really thought about it.
"Oh," said Ruth, much dashed. "We thought about you," she said reprovingly. "No one has talked about anything else for days."
"Ah well," Brat said, "when you have run away for years and years people will talk about you."
"I shouldn't dream of doing anything so outre," Ruth said, unforgiving.
"Where did you get that word?" Eleanor asked.
"It's a very good word. Mrs. Peck uses it."
Brat felt that he ought to paint in a little local colour by saying: "How are the Pecks, by the way?" But he had no mind to spare for artifice. He was waiting for the moment when the limes would thin out and he would see Latchetts.
For the moment when he would be face to face with his "twin."