“Hallo! we’re in luck,” said Rosa, pointing to where the table was laid with a cloth and plates, bread, cheese, biscuits, lettuce, and actually plovers’ eggs. There was, however, only one knife and fork, only one glass, and only one bottle—it was a bottle of hock, and Rosa hastened to read its label—Liebfraumilch.
“Mr. Dunning is here on business and is having a scratch lunch,” said Priscilla. “Liebfraumilch is a lovely wine, taking it year in and year out. Of course there are exceptionally good years of Liebfraumilch; but taking it all round it is a good sound wine.”
“Vide auctioneer’s catalogue,” said Rosa. “But I decline to touch it, highly recommended though it is by a distinguished canootzer. I’ll have of that bread, however, une trauche, s’il vous plait, and I’ll poach a couple of those eggs, if I do get three months for it. How funny! Didn’t I say something about plovers’ eggs just now?”
“I’d be afraid to meddle with the eggs, but I’ll back you up in the matter of the bread and cheese; I’m fairly starving. On the whole, perhaps we would do well to hunt up Mrs. Pearce first. It’s as well to be ceremonial even in a house that you have broken into by stealth. If you take so much as a bite of that egg before we can start level, I’ll cut you up into such small slices.”
The knife which Priscilla had picked up for the purpose which she had but partly defined, fell from her hand. A sound had come from the big hooded chair in the shadow of the screen at the fireplace, and she had glanced round and seen, looking round the side of the chair at her, a man’s face.
The knife fell from her grasp at the startling sight. Rosa, following the direction of her gaze, turned round and saw the apparition; but she did not let fall the egg which she had taken up for critical inspection.
There was an awkward silence, but an effective tableau, had any one been present to see it. There was the large square room, with bookcases of the loveliest Chippendale design hiding all its walls, and at one side of the table stood a young woman, with a face beautifully rosy, and a mouth slightly open to complete the expression of astonishment that looked forth from her eyes; at the end of the table nearest the fireplace, another girl glancing over her shoulder at the man’s face that protruded beyond the line of downward slope at one side of the chair.
Perhaps the expression of astonishment on the man’s face was the strongest of the three. His mouth was quite wide open, and his eyes were staring curiously, with a look within them that suggested that he had not quite succeeded in taking in the details of the picture before him—that he had not succeeded in reconciling all that he saw with the actualities of life.
Both the girls perceived in a moment that he had just awakened; but this fact did not prevent their being paralysed for the moment—for several moments. The moments went on into minutes, until the whole thing had the note of the child’s game of “Who speaks first?”
It was this broadening of an impressive silence into a child’s comedy that was the saving of the situation. A smile, to which his open mouth lent itself quite readily, came over the young man’s face—he was a young man, and his face was still younger—and, after a maidenly hesitancy of a few seconds, the girls also smiled. His smile broadened into a grin, and both girls broke into a peal of laughter.
He pulled himself round in his chair and got upon his feet, still grinning, and then they saw that he was just what girls accustomed to tall men would call short, or what girls accustomed to short men would call medium-sized. He had very short hair of an indefinite shade of brown, and his mouth, when he grinned, was well proportioned, if it was designed to make a gap touching the lobe of each ear.
He stood up before them and shook himself out, as it seemed, after the manner of a newly awakened dog. Then he took in a reef or two (also speaking figuratively) of his mouth, and it became quite ordinary. He bowed as awkwardly as most men do in ordinary circumstances, and this fact was pleasing to the girls; no girl who is worth anything tolerates a man who makes a graceful bow.
“This is an unexpected pleasure,” he said. “That is—for me; it can’t be the same for you—that is, of course it’s unexpected, but little enough of the pleasure. Only if I had known—you didn’t say you were coming, you know—maybe you are in the habit of coming every day.”
The girls shook their heads; both glanced toward the window. He followed their example.
“Gloriana!” he said, “it has been raining after all.”
“Yes,” said Priscilla. “It has been a thunderstorm—a terrible thunderstorm!”
“You don’t say so! Long ago?”
“Half an hour ago. You must have heard it—the hail was terrific!” continued Priscilla.
“Gloriana! I’m afraid I’ve given myself away. If I said I wasn’t asleep I suppose you wouldn’t believe me.”
He looked from one to the other as if to guess whether of the twain was the more charitable or the more likely to make a fool of herself by telling a lie that would take in no one. He could not make up his mind on either point; and so he illuminated the silence by another grin. The girls looked at each other; they could hardly be blamed; and they certainly were not blamed by him.
He became quite serious in a moment, and his mouth seemed actually normal.
“I think that I’m rather lucky, do you know, in awaking to find such visitors—my first visitors—the first people to give me a welcome in my house. Before I have slept a single night under its roof—only for a matter of half an hour, and that in the day—I have two visitors. I hope that you will let me bid you welcome and that you will welcome me. May we exchange cards? My name is Wingfield—Jack Wingfield. I am the grandson, you know. You didn’t take me for the grandfather, did you?”
CHAPTER V
W E never heard that you were coming—not a word,” said Rosa.
“Not a word,” echoed Priscilla. “We have enjoyed permission from Mr. Dunning to walk in the park and to pluck the wild flowers and blackberries and things like that. That was why we came to-day.”
“Let me see; isn’t it a bit too early for blackberries?” said he.
“Yes; but not for primroses,” said Rosa.
“Nor for lunch,” said he. “Did I dream that I heard one of you—if not both—say that this house should be called Starvation Hall?”
They both laughed.
“Not exactly,” said Priscilla.
“Well, words to that effect,” he cried. “Anyhow, whether you did or not, you’ll never say it again. Here comes Mrs. Pearce—of course you know Mrs. Pearce. I needn’t introduce her to you.”
“Oh, we all know Mrs. Pearce,” cried Rosa, as the caretaker entered, bearing a tray and a smell of a grill.
“Then she can introduce you to me,” said he.
Mrs. Pearce, red of face and opulent of bust, stood for a moment as one amazed, looking from the young women to the young man.
“Good morning, Mrs. Pearce,” cried Rosa.
“Good morning, Miss Rosa—Miss Caffyn,” said the woman, nearly dropping the tray in her attempt to drop a curtsey—the curtsey of the charity school girl to a member of the Rector’s family.
“Good