'You are not offended with me for asking?' His tone had become astonishingly deferential.
'Not the least. I am a business woman. If I thought myself entitled to more I should say so. But it is extremely doubtful whether I can really be of any use whatever to you.'
'All right,' said the Squire, returning to his own table. 'Now, then, let us go on with No. 190.'
'Is it necessary now to put in--well, _quite_ so much about Penelope?' asked Elizabeth, as she took up her pen.
'It seems a little long and dragged in.' Elizabeth looked critically at the paragraph.
'And we have now unravelled the web?--we can do without her? Yes--let her go!' said the Squire, in a tone of excessive complaisance.
When the morning's work was done, and luncheon over, Elizabeth carried off Pamela to her room. When Pamela emerged, she went in search of Forest, interviewed him in the gun-room, and then shutting herself up in the 'den' she wrote to Desmond.
'MY DEAR DEZZY--There are such queer things going on in this queer house! Yesterday Broomie gave warning, and father barricaded the park gates, and was perfectly mad, and determined not to listen to anybody. In the middle of the night he and Forest took the barricade down, and to-day, Broomie is to be not only secretary, but land-agent, and anything else she pleases--queen, in fact, of all she surveys--including me. But I am bound to say she had been very decent to me over it all. She _wants_ me to do some of the housekeeping--and she has actually made father consent to my helping at the hospital every afternoon. Of course I am awfully glad about that. I shall bicycle over.
'But all the same it is very odd, and perhaps you and I had better consider what it _may_ mean. I know from Broomie herself that she gave notice yesterday--and now she is going to stay. And I know from Forest that father called him up when it was quite dark, between three and four in the morning--Mrs. Forest thought the Germans had come when she heard the knocking--and asked him to come with him and undo the gates. Forest told me that _he_ would have had nothing whatever to do with closing them, nor with anything 'agin the Government! He's a staunch old soul, is Forest. So when father told him what he wanted, he didn't know what to make of it. However, they both groped their way through the fog, which was thick on the other side of the park, and set to at the gates. Forest says it was an awful business to get everything cleared away. Father and Gregson had made an uncommonly good job of it. If Gregson had put in work like that on his own hedges and gates, Forest says he mightn't have been kicked out! It took them ages getting the barbed wire cleared away, because they hadn't any proper nippers. Father took off his coat, and worked like a navvy, and Forest hoisted him up to get at the wire along the wall. Forest says he was determined to leave nothing! "And I believe, Miss, the Squire was very glad of the fog--because there couldn't be any one prying around."