Dearest ensconced himself behind the wheel and swore softly.
"He's saying 'Damn it! I should know best,'" whispered Stafford.
"At this distance you can't hear," said Gheena.
They were squeezed up together in the window, safe behind a veil of cobwebs, a friendliness unknown before between them. Gheena had forgotten war and spying. She was with someone who was protecting her.
"Shall we go out the back avenue? it's shorter," said Mr. Freyne.
Instantly Gheena's hand went out and caught Stafford's arm. They remembered the car down there.
"Mike Dundon put new sthones upon it only yesterday," said Phil stolidly. "And the off tyre is shaky, sir."
Basil Stafford felt that no half-crown had been so well earned as that which he put into Phil's hand when the car had hummed away out the front gate.
Gheena, a little shaken and upset, gave him tea in the school-room. One cannot snub a man who has hidden with you in an oat-loft. They talked and laughed with the same new friendliness, Stafford telling her of his years abroad, of Italy, of France, and then of Germany. The cloud came suddenly into Gheena's eyes.
"You were there for years, weren't you?" she said.
"For some months," he answered absently; "in Berlin. I knew some nice men there too."
"Whom you would not care to fight against now, I suppose?" Gheena muttered half to herself. "Oh, if there was only no war!" she flashed out, "and no economy, and no black oats, and wounded people and things!"
Basil said gravely that it would be a far better arrangement. He saw the cloud which had risen up.
"And--there being a war--we cannot be friends," he said slowly, coming to the mantelshelf, looking hard at Gheena.
Gheena felt a very hot flush being succeeded by pallor as she replied that one could not be friends with someone one could not understand.
Mr. Stafford said, "Or--anything else except friends," still keeping close to her.
"Gheena, a little bird whispered to me that you were home. They saw you coming, and I've news for you. Oh, Mr. Stafford!" Violet Weston pushed open the door, her golden head gleaming, her shoes of purple suede pinching her so that she limped.
Violet replied, "Private news," lightly. Mrs. Weston sent Stafford out. He went to fetch his car, and she broke into excited whispers of how she'd heard that there was news of some spy about, and several other things, which could only have come from Mr. Keefe.