‘Oh, all right,’ said Philadelphia. ‘I can’t see that having a car is anything to be so grateful for, even the butcher’s boy has one, you know. And I wasn’t grumbling at having to take it out; I just hate meeting strangers, that’s all. What on earth am I to talk to him about all the way from Woodford?’
‘It’s quite unnecessary for you to talk. I suggest that you should occupy yourself with driving rather more carefully than you usually do round those Hogrush corners. The man is being paid to teach your brother, not to talk to you, and I may say, whilst we are on this subject, that one of the chief reasons why I engaged a tutor these holidays is that I am not anxious for you to see a great deal of Roderick just at present. He is going through a very tiresome phase indeed, quite beyond himself with all this nonsense about not caring to go into the army and so on. I only hope that this tutor (who is, I understand, a sportsmanlike young fellow) will be able to make him see sense and get him out of doors a bit. You’d better go now, or you’ll be late for that train – don’t forget to ask if there are any packing cases for me at the station.’
Philadelphia stumped out of the room, banging the door as loudly as she dared, dragged on an old fur coat, fetched her car from the garage, and drove at a perfectly reckless speed to Woodford Station, where she found to her further annoyance that she was a quarter of an hour too early for the train. It was a clear night after a day of drenching rain, and as she sat looking through the open window of her car at a tiny new moon surrounded by twinkling stars and listening to the distant church bells practising, no doubt, their Christmas peal, her temper gradually improved. By the time that she heard the train approaching, so far off at first that the noise it made seemed almost to come from inside her own head, she was feeling quite well disposed towards the world in general. Presently the noise of the train grew much louder, then stopped altogether, and she knew that it had arrived at the next station. At last it came puffing through the tunnel, all lights and bustle. She could see people reading or sleeping behind the misted glass of the windows, and a man, probably, she thought, the tutor, taking luggage down from the rack. There was a long pause, then as the train heaved itself, groaning and creaking, towards its destination, a porter came up to the car with two suitcases, followed by a small young man who was fumbling in his pockets, no doubt for change.
‘Are you Mr Fisher?’ said Philadelphia. ‘I’m Philadelphia Bobbin. How do you do?’
‘Excuse me, miss,’ said the porter; ‘there are two large packing cases for her ladyship. Will you take them now?’
‘No, thank you,’ said Philadelphia. ‘They can wait.’
‘I’m so sorry you had all the bother of turning out on such a cold evening,’ said Paul as they drove away.
‘It doesn’t matter in the least; I love driving. The chauffeur’s wife is in hospital and he’s gone to be with her, and Bobby went out after lunch to see an Eton friend who lives near here and he isn’t back yet. I expect he’s found some sort of gambling, bridge or backgammon. You know Bobby, do you?’
Paul wondered whether she was in the secret and decided that she was not. ‘Yes, I have met him once or twice. Have you any more brothers and sisters?’
‘No, thank goodness. I expect we should have had, only father was drowned, you see, just before Bobby was born. But on Christmas Eve all my aunts and uncles and cousins come for a week, with masses of children, so the house will be quite full.’ She said this almost apologetically, as though she thought that Paul might otherwise feel bored.
‘Nice uncles and aunts?’
‘Oh, not too bad on the whole. Uncle Ernest Leamington Spa is rather a trial because he always has such jolly ideas for a Merry Yule, but nobody pays much attention to him.’
‘Do you live down here always?’ He looked at a face which seemed to him, in the faintly reflected headlights of an oncoming car, to fall very little short of perfect beauty.
‘Yes, we do,’ she said abruptly. ‘Nobody knows how horrible it is to live in the country always, you might just as well be in prison. I hate the country.’
‘Would you prefer London?’
‘Well, I went to London once for the season; I was coming out, you know, and I can’t say I enjoyed it very much, but there must be other sorts of life there that I should enjoy.’
‘Why do you think that?’
‘One knows certain things about oneself.’
‘You ought to marry,’ said Paul. ‘Girls are always happier married, I believe.’
‘So my mother tells me,’ said Philadelphia drily. She looked at him as though she had remembered that he was a stranger and her brother’s tutor, and said no more. Presently they separated, Paul to make his first entrance into Compton Bobbin and Philadelphia to put her car away in the garage.
When he saw her again in the drawing-room before dinner he thought that she was not really as beautiful as she had seemed to be at first. Her features were certainly very good, her eyes large and of a remarkably bright blue colour; but her hair, complexion and clothes were dull and looked uncared-for. This he thought must be due to the fact
