“It’s not, darling. She came to Donald; or rather she sent her sister, with this story, and I can promise you I never breathed Donald’s name to her.”

Barbara’s forehead was furrowed with puzzlement.

“But it doesn’t make sense. You’ve seen her. You know.”

“I agree it’s very unlike what I knew of her, but those are the facts.”

“Donald must have made it up.”

“Don’t be a little idiot.”

“Idiot nothing, I . . .”

The colonel had been listening intently. Now he sat up and took command, as he would have done in his army days. There was authority in his voice.

“Be quiet, both of you. You, Barbara, ought to be ashamed of yourself, sayin’ over and over again that things aren’t true, and not bringin’ one fact to substantiate your claim. As for you, Dick, I don’t know what manners they teach you in the Army these days, but in my time we didn’t insult ladies the way you’ve been doin’.”

Barbara shook the tears out of her eyes and crouched down beside her father.

“It’s not Dick’s fault. It’s just some awful muddle, but Janet couldn’t have cheated.”

The colonel looked away from Barbara’s red head to the sky, where some rooks were cawing homewards.

“Barbara’s got the right of the thing, Dick. There’s nothin’ wrong with Janet Brain, and there’s nothin’ wrong with the mother.” He got up. “Off you go, Dick, to the farm, and fetch that brother of yours and tell him he’s to meet me at the Brains’ cottage.”

Barbara sat up on her haunches.

“But, Daddy, you can’t. It’s two fields to walk. You couldn’t do it.”

The colonel stiffened and straightened.

“For weeks now I’ve been thinkin’ to meself I’ve had enough of that damned sawbones’ mollycoddlin’, but I didn’t see me way to make a break. I’m goin’ to the Brains’ cottage, and it’s not goin’ to do me any harm, but there’s one thing I insist on, and no arguin’, mind. I’m havin’ a whisky and soda before I start.”

Section 21

Because it was hot the party sat on the lawn, Maggie in one deck-chair and the colonel in another. Hoover, who had somehow got himself included in the party, lay under Maggie’s chair. Barbara and Dick sat on the grass, Donald, looking stony, stood with his hands in his pockets. Janet, her face ghastly, and too feeble to stand, was half sitting on a window-ledge.

“These are the facts, Mrs. Brain,” the colonel said gently, “as Donald and Dick have got hold of ’em. I wasn’t havin’ that kind of tale in my garden, with no one there to refute it, so we came to put the story in front of you.” Maggie was looking at Donald.