had opened inwards, and within the opening stood two people in earnest conversation. One was short and slight, the other was tall and leaned on a stick. The short and slight person was Anne Lasarge, her grey cloak and grey bonnet with white strings proved her; the other was Major Hilton Fraser, the invalided army doctor, lodging at Mainsail Cottage, with the Penberthys. He was lame from shell splinters in the thigh; also four years spent in Mesopotamia and front-line dressing-stations in France had left their mark. Major Fraser was the hero of the Romilly family; Pamela could not mistake his figure. The question was: what could he and the Little Pilgrim be at, meeting at Woodrising?

She paused to gaze, making sure. Then she went on her way, wondering and interested. Pamela was always interested; some people called her "inquisitive", which is not so pleasant an accusation to have tacked on to one! But she could not help herself, for it was that which her nose stood for, with its delicate, keen lines and sharp outline. Just inquiry and the liveliest intuition.

"I daresay they are in love with each other," considered Pamela, reviewing the situation mentally, "they ought to be, they’ve gone through a lot together, but what has Woodrising to do with it, unless they know somebody who wants to live there!"

This seemed to her a reasonable explanation. She decided that he had friends who wished to take the house, and he had asked Miss Anne to come and look at the rooms for him. He might find difficulty in measuring rooms perhaps.

All the same he’d better not have depended on Miss Anne for that sort of thing. "I’d sooner be nursed by that angel than any living soul," thought Pamela, "but I don’t believe she knows about houses, and paint, and carpets. She’s perfectly vague and unpractical about prices. He’d better have asked Miss Chance--or Jim Crow--she’d be better than anybody. I wish he’d marry Jim Crow, then we could keep a hero in the family."

Pamela sighed as she decided that there was no hope of this glorious conclusion to friendship. "It’s a pity she’s too young--but he likes her better than Mollie Shard."

She reached the top of the long hill at the back of the valley, and, mounting, began the easier part of the journey--down and up, down and up, over the loveliest scented moorland road--till presently she came in sight of the miniature railway station, looking like a good-sized hen-coop on its platform, and the shining rails stretching away north and south as far as eye could see, until the hills swallowed them.

Nobody was in the 

 Prev. P 7/404 next