"Thank you very much," I returned, with my best bow.
"D'you mean to live on the island?" she asked.
"I hope to," I said truthfully; and then, thinking that this was a favourable chance for making my enquiry, I added: "I suppose there have been all sorts of changes since I was here—lots of fresh people in the neighbourhood?"
She paused, as if to consider the problem. "Not so very many, sir," she said. "There isn't much to bring folks here except in the summer time. Mrs. Green at the Gunner's Arms is dead, as I suppose you've heard."
"Yes," I said. "I have just come from there."
"And Colonel Paton of Brooklands—he's gone too. The Bowden-Smiths have got his house now, and I have heard that there's a new party taken 'The Laurels'—a foreign gentleman, according to what they tell me."
"'The Laurels'?" I repeated thoughtfully. "I seem to know the name, but I'm hanged if I can remember where it is."
"Why, surely you can't have forgotten 'The Laurels,'" she persisted. "That little white house facing the estuary, away round the point." She pointed out across the green, to where the ground rose steeply behind the Gunner's Arms. "You can't see it from here," she added, "but it's almost opposite you when you're on the island."
I could have leaned over the counter and hugged her, but with another masterly effort I managed to preserve my composure.
"Of course," I said. "How stupid of me! The fact is I have been away so long that I've got a bit mixed up in my bearings." I stopped to stroke a large black cat which had jumped up on to the chair alongside of me. "So it's been let to a foreigner, has it?" I continued. "Not a German, I hope?"