“All right; but you won’t mind waiting a minute?”
“Oh, not at all!” he replied, with sweet sarcasm. “I don’t mind in the least how long I stand here in the cold. I quite enjoy it.”
Then suddenly the door was flung open, and Eileen, holding a photo of the Head of Affairs in her hand, which she had fetched down from my bedroom, started to compare it carefully with the original.
“Yes,” she sighed; “you are something like it.”
But the visitor had walked in unceremoniously, with the joyful dog leaping around.
“Now,” he said severely, as he took off his coat. “Where is your mistress?”
Eileen looked mournful. “If you please, sir, I’m _very_ sorry, but I told you a _wicked_ story just now. The mistress isn’t entertaining friends”—that was self-evident, as the cottage living-rooms were empty, and it was hardly the kind of day one would choose to entertain friends in the garden—“and she isn’t ill in bed neither. She isn’t here at all. But I didn’t like to say so at first. I was afraid, not knowing who you were, and coming after the shock. Have you heard the awful news?”
“No!” exclaimed the harassed, hungry man, jumping to his feet again in alarm. “What’s happened?”
“Haven’t you heard?” and Eileen lowered her voice to an hysterical whisper. “_We’ve discovered footprints!_”
By this time the Head of Affairs was quite convinced in his mind that either the girl was not in the full possession of her senses, or else she had been to see a Robinson Crusoe pantomime, and it had turned her brain, so he merely said—
“Well, perhaps you’ll now try if you can discover some coffee, and that as quickly as possible.” And he dismissed her when he had ascertained where we had gone, as he was rather weary of the whole performance.
Meanwhile my guests and I were making a few neighbourly calls in passing. In a scattered community that is often cut off by the weather from intercourse with its fellow-kind, a little gossip is always welcome. Not idle gossip, I would have you understand; but talk on things of serious import. For instance, I was naturally very glad to learn from one of my neighbours that old Mrs. Blossom had not been secretly harbouring a German spy after all, as it turned out that the masculine under-vests that had been hung out each week lately with the wash really belonged to her late husband; and after cherishing them for five years, she had decided it was more patriotic to wear them herself at a time like this, than to buy herself new ones when wool was so badly needed for the troops.