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Page 35
"Perhaps so," Helen agreed, with a shade of doubt in her tone.
CHAPTER X
Philippa and Helen started, a few mornings later, for one of their
customary walks. The crystalline October sunshine, in which every
distant tree and, seaward, each slowly travelling steamer, seemed
to gain a new clearness of outline, lay upon the deep-ploughed
fields, the yellowing bracken, and the red-gold of the bending trees,
while the west wind, which had strewn the sea with white-flecked
waves, brought down the leaves to form a carpet for their feet, and
played strange music along the wood-crested slope. In the broken
land through which they made their way, a land of trees and moorland,
with here and there a cultivated patch, the yellow gorse still glowed
in unexpected corners; queer, scentless flowers made splashes of
colour in the hedgerows; a rabbit scurried sometimes across their
path; a cock pheasant, after a moment's amazed stare, lowered his
head and rushed for unnecessary shelter. The longer they looked
upwards, the bluer seemed the sky. The grass beneath their feet was
as green and soft as in springtime. Driven by the wind, here and
there a white-winged gull sailed over their heads,--a cloud of them
rested upon a freshly turned little square of ploughed land between
two woods. A flight of pigeons, like torn leaves tossed about by
the wind, circled and drifted above them. Philippa seated herself
upon the trunk of a fallen tree and gazed contentedly about her.
"If I had a looking-glass and a few more hairpins, I should be
perfectly happy," she sighed. "I am sure my hair must look awful."
Helen glanced at it admiringly.
"I decline to say the correct thing," she declared. "I will only
remind you that there will be no one here to look at it."
"I am not so sure," Philippa replied. "These are the woods which
the special constables haunt by day and by night. They gaze up
every tree trunk for a wireless installation, and they lie behind
hedges and watch for mysterious flashes."
"Are you suggesting that we may meet Mr. Lessingham?" Helen enquired,
lazily. "I am perfectly certain that he knows nothing of the
equipment of the melodramatic spy. As to Zeppelins, don't you
remember he told us that he hated them and was terrified of bombs."
"My dear," Philippa remonstrated, "Mr. Lessingham does nothing crude."
"And yet,--" Helen began.
"Yet I suppose the man has something at the back of his head,"
Philippa interrupted. "Sometimes I think that he has, sometimes I
believe that Richard must have shown him my picture, and he has come
over here to see if I am really like it."
"He does behave rather like that," her companion admitted drily.
Phillipa turned and looked at her.
"Helen," she said severely, "don't be a cat."
"If I were to express my opinion of your behaviour," Helen went on,
picking up a pine cone and examining it, "I might astonish you."
"You have an evil mind," Philippa yawned, producing her cigarette
case. "What you really resent is that Mr. Lessingham sometimes
forgets to talk about Dick."
"The poor man doesn't get much chance," Helen retorted, watching the
blue smoke from her cigarette and leaning back with an air of content.
"Whatever do you and he find to talk about, Philippa?"
"Literature--English and German," Philippa murmured demurely. "Mr.
Lessingham is remarkably well read, and he knows more about our
English poets than any man I have met for years."
"I forgot that you enjoyed that sort of thing."
"Once more, don't be a cat," Philippa enjoined. "If you want me to
confess it, I will own up at once. You know what a simple little
thing I am. I admire Mr. Lessingham exceedingly, and I find him a
most interesting companion."
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