Charms -- Fiction; Great Britain -- Social life and customs -- 20th century -- Fiction; Love stories; World War, 1914-1918 -- Fiction
"She'd get 'it,' sure thing. In the neck," the young Staff-officer had
explained grimly. "She'd know better than to ask the second time."
So, exactly as he was not taking her out to lunch, Captain Ross had not
secured for her this post on The Honeycomb. He had told Jack Awdas to
get it for her, through his friend Major Leefe. A very different thing.
Olwen had "given up" the subtle reasonings of the sex.
Today he was obviously in a bad temper. Why? After he had ordered his
own lunch, he turned to her with an edgy politeness.
"I hope you enjoyed the show last night, Miss Howel-Jones."
"Show----?" said Olwen, forgetting for a second that she had been taken
to the theatre by Mr. Ellerton, the young R.N.A.S. officer.
"Yes; you were too occupied to notice who else was in the house, I
guess. I was in the dress-sairrcle. I looked right down upon you in the
stalls."
Now, Olwen was losing her habit of the vivid blush that used to scorch
her. She merely coloured up slightly but prettily as she returned, "Oh,
were you?" and proceeded to eat her fish and to discuss the play--which
had been _Romance_. She had thought it lovely.
Captain Ross informed her definitely that he himself had no use for such
sentimental balderdash; and then told her he guessed it made her pretty
late, going back all the way to Wembley Park (where her Aunt lived)
after the theatre. He hoped that at least young Ellerton took her all
the way home.
"Yes, thank you; he did."
"M'm. Last train from Baker Street, I presume. And then you've a long
trail from the station to your house. In the drive, isn't it?"
"Yes, but we didn't go by train at all," the girl explained. "Mr.
Ellerton managed to get a taxi to take us all the way back from town."
"In war-time?" Captain Ross's black-cat-like face was a study in
righteous indignation. Then he took a lighter tone, tilting his chin
contemptuously. "Well! If Mr. Ellerton's got money to burn that way it's
no concairrrrn of mine. Taxis out to Wembley Park with a girl who's
employed in the same office as he is. That's Ellerton's lookout. Not the
kind of thing I'd care to be seen doing myself. (No, I won't have
anything to drink. A ginger-ale, waiter.) Still, if he thinks that's all
right in war-time and for folks on War work together, I've nothing to
say."
The ghost of a smile hovered about Olwen's red mouth as Captain Ross
went on saying this "nothing."
"Sweet as honey to any girl he takes out, no doubt. The regular naval
flirt. He held your hand in the theatre, or some foolishness of that
sort, I daresay."
"He didn't!" retorted little Olwen, quickly, and then a message seemed
to come to her, whispered, perhaps by the generations of girls in love
who still survived in her blood. Upon that instinct she added, "He did
_not_ hold my hand----in the theatre."
The finest judge of women in Europe rose swiftly enough to this. "Is
that so? You mean he only held it in the taxi going home. A much better
scheme altogether."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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