“We must keep together.”
“I can’t loaf about here any longer. I’m catching cold. And I promised to keep a look-out in the lane.”
Joan Gaunt brought out her electric lamp and glanced at her watch.
“It is only just eleven.”
“He said he might be here early.”
Obviously Lizzie Straker meant to have her way, and her having it meant that Joan and Eve had to break camp and move into the timber track that joined the lane. The night was fairly dark, but Joan Gaunt had taken care to scatter torn scraps of white paper between the clump of firs and the woodland track. A light wind had risen, and the black boughs of the firs swayed vaguely against the sky. The sandy track was banked with furze, broom, and young birch trees, and here and there between the heather were little islands of short sweet turf that had been nibbled by rabbits. Joan Gaunt and Eve spread their coats on one of these patches of turf, while Lizzie Straker went on towards the lane to watch for Galahad.
Eve heard the turret clock at Fernhill strike twelve. The wind in the trees kept up a constant under-chant, so that the subdued humming of Kentucky’s car as it crept up the lane was hardly distinguishable from the wind-song overhead. Two beams of light swung into the dark colonnade, thrusting yellow rays in among the firs, and splashing on the gorse and heather. The big car was crawling dead slow, with Lizzie Straker standing on the step and holding on to one of the hood-brackets. Jones, the chauffeur, was driving.
“Here we are.”
Lizzie Straker jumped down excitedly.
“It was a good thing I went. He’d have missed the end of the lane. Wouldn’t you, old sport?”