CHAPTER XIV.
I stood in the road while Jacintha mounted her bicycle and rode up the slight hill to the gate, when she looked back and waved her hand as she turned into the grounds. Having waited a few minutes, I followed her directions, found the weak spot in the hedge, scrambled through, and at once sat down on the grass.
I saw I was in a remote corner of a large field, in which a few Jersey cows were grazing. But this was not quite an ordinary field, as it contained a good many foreign trees with iron railings round them. It was more like a park. In the middle stood a small mound, looking as if it had been made artificially, with a kind of arbour on the top overgrown with some sort of creeper and shut in by trees.
The time seemed to pass very slowly, but at last I saw the flash of Jacintha's white dress in the sunshine as she walked rapidly towards my corner, the house not being visible from where I sat. To my vexation, however, she was not alone. A few yards behind came a boy of about my own age and size, with a straw hat on the back of his head, a red-and-blue blazer thrown over his white cricket shirt, and his hands thrust in the pockets of his flannel trousers.
While Jacintha tripped quickly over the grass, her companion, who, no doubt, was her brother, seemed to follow far less cheerfully. I could not help thinking there was something unwilling, almost resentful, in his manner, so that I felt prepared to pay him back in his own coin. Although I might look as dirty and as much like a tramp as Jacintha had suggested, I was not going to stand any nonsense.
When they reached the arbour they came to a standstill and seemed to be holding an argument, until, a few minutes later, Jacintha tossed back her long hair and set forth at a run in my direction, whereupon I went to meet her.
'You didn't mind my bringing Dick?' she suggested, looking doubtfully into my face.
'Have you told him, then?' I asked.
'I told him yesterday,' she said. 'I mean I told him about seeing you in the wheat-field, and your running away from school, and when I just had time to whisper that I had met you before lunch, he said I must not come; but I told him I had promised, and then he said he would come too.'
By this time we were within a few feet of Dick, who looked all right, although he seemed to think a great deal of himself. He was fair, like Jacintha, and he did not take his hands out of his pockets, so I put my hands into my pockets also, and stared at him as hard as he stared at me.