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“Flight Lieutenant Jervis and I rode over the other day. It was in the morning. Most of them were up on the dig. She was sitting writing a letter and I suppose she didn’t hear us coming. The boy who brings you in wasn’t about for once, and we came straight up on to the verandah. Apparently she saw Flight Lieutenant Jervis’s shadow thrown on the wall—and she fairly screamed! Apologized, of course. Said she thought it was a strange man. A bit odd, that. I mean, even if it was a strange man, why get the wind up?”
I nodded thoughtfully.
Miss Reilly was silent, then burst out suddenly:
“I don’t know what’s the matter with them this year. They’ve all got the jumps. Johnson goes about so glum she can’t open her mouth. David never speaks if he can help it. Bill, of course, never stops, and somehow his chatter seems to make the others worse. Carey goes about looking as though something would snap any minute. And they all watch each other as though—as though—Oh, I don’t know, but it’s queer.”
It was odd, I thought, that two such dissimilar people as Miss Reilly and Major Pennyman should have been struck in the same manner.
Just then Mr. Coleman came bustling in. Bustling was just the word for it. If his tongue had hung out and he had suddenly produced a tail to wag you wouldn’t have been surprised.
“Hallo-allo,” he said. “Absolutely the world’s best shopper—that’s me. Have you shown nurse all the beauties of the town?”
“She wasn’t impressed,” said Miss Reilly dryly.
“I don’t blame her,” said Mr. Coleman heartily. “Of all the one-horse tumbledown places!”
“Not a lover of the picturesque or the antique, are you, Bill? I can’t think why you are an archaeologist.”
“Don’t blame me for that. Blame my guardian. He’s a learned bird—fellow of his college—browses among books in bedroom slippers—that kind of man. Bit of a shock for him to have a ward like me.”
“I think it’s frightfully stupid of you to be forced into a profession you don’t care for,” said the girl sharply.
“Not forced, Sheila, old girl, not forced. The old man asked if I had any special profession in mind, and I said I hadn’t, and so he wangled a season out here for me.”
“But haven’t you any idea really what you’d like to do? You must have!”
“Of course I have. My idea would be to give work a miss altogether. What I’d like to do is to have plenty of money and go in for motor racing.”
“You’re absurd!” said Miss Reilly.
She sounded quite angry.
“Oh, I realize that it’s quite out of the question,” said Mr. Coleman cheerfully. “So, if I’ve got to do something, I don’t much care what it is so long as it isn’t mugging in an office all day long. I was quite agreeable to seeing a bit
of the world. Here goes, I said, and along I came.”
“And a fat lot of use you must be, I expect!”
“There you’re wrong. I can stand up on the dig and shout ‘Y’Allah’ with anybody! And as a matter of fact I’m not so dusty at drawing. Imitating handwriting used to be my speciality at school. I’d have made a first-class forger. Oh, well, I may come to that yet. If my Rolls-Royce splashes you with mud as you’re waiting for a bus, you’ll know that I’ve taken to crime.”
Miss Reilly said coldly: “Don’t you think it’s about time you started instead of talking so much?”
“Hospitable, aren’t we, nurse?”
“I’m sure Nurse Leatheran is anxious to get settled in.”
“You’re always sure of everything,” retorted Mr. Coleman with a grin.
That was true enough, I thought. Cocksure little minx.
I said dryly: “Perhaps we’d better start, Mr. Coleman.”
“Right you are, nurse.”
I shook hands with Miss Reilly and thanked her, and we set off.
“Damned attractive girl, Sheila,” said Mr. Coleman. “But always ticking a fellow off.”
