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And yet, as she leaned back in her seat, her heart was dancing in time to the dance-music of Mrs Peagrim's hired orchestra. It puzzled Jill. And then, quite suddenly yet with no abruptness or sense of discovery, just as if it were something which she had known all along, the truth came upon her. It was Wally, the thought of Wally, the knowledge that Wally existed, that made her happy.
"The girls were saying that one of us would be dismissed." "Oh, I shouldn't think that's likely." "I hope not." "So do I. What are we stopping for?" Jill had halted in front of a shabby-looking house, one of those depressing buildings which spring up overnight at seashore resorts and start to decay the moment the builders have left them. "I live here." "Here!" Wally looked at her in consternation.
Maybe she trusted to luck to fall in with some stray bachelor or bereaved male who would undertake to console a widow or one day's standing. I will say, in passing, that there are no bachelors from choice among the birds; they are all rejected suitors, while old maids are entirely unknown. There is a Jack to every Jill; and some to boot.
Jill says I have to begin this story because it was me I mean it was I who made all the trouble in the first place. That is so like Jill. She is such a good hand at forgetting. Why, it was she who suggested the plot to me.
He'd fallen in love with Jill after meeting her only twice, and both times she had been with Vale. She intended to marry Vale. But on the evidence at hand Vale was either dead or a prisoner of the invaders; if the last, his chances of living to marry Jill did not look good, and if the first, this was surely no time to revive his memory. He found a news broadcast.
Jill sipped her coffee miserably. She was regretting that little spurt of temper. She wished she could have recalled the words. Not that it was the actual words that had torn asunder this gossamer thing, the friendship which they had begun to weave like some fragile web: it was her manner, the manner of the princess rebuking an underling.
Perhaps it was a little irregular and her complexion slightly sallow, but when she was flushed or excited and she opened her big bright eyes, and one could see her little white teeth gleaming as she laughed, I have thought Jill could look almost beautiful; but her good looks depended on her expression.
"If the girls would like to begin dancing," suggested Tom, "Jill can play her piece now, and you can take one, and I'll take the other. It'll keep the things going, you know, till the rest turn up." At this juncture Dr Brandram was announced, greatly to Tom's delight, who, among so many strangers, was beginning to feel a little shy. "That's all right," said he.
There was no sound save for the occasional crackle of resinous log burning in a brazier placed in a far corner, before which Jill suddenly crouched, shivering, though the night was warm.
Then, turning, she beheld the snake-like form of Otis Pilkington towering at her side. Mr Pilkington seemed nervous but determined. His face was half hidden by the silk scarf that muffled his throat, for he was careful of his health and had a fancied tendency to bronchial trouble. Above the scarf a pair of mild eyes gazed down at Jill through their tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles.
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