"Look here," he said earnestly, "you are not to attempt to look along these cliffs, you two girls. Have you thought what it might mean if there really was a base, and desperate men earning their living by holding it? As their lives would certainly be over if they were found, do you think they would let you two come back quietly to tell the police?"
Miss Freyne withered him with a look before she inquired icily who had told Mr. Stafford of their intention.
Basil Stafford observed with some confusion that he'd heard of it--er--somehow.
Gheena replied that she did not remember mentioning it until that morning, and then only to two people who took an interest in the war.
At this Basil Stafford shot out "Steady," his voice shaking a little.
"Well, you can't," she replied with firmness.
"I can take an interest in folly," he observed after a pause, speaking with the extreme sweetness which marks distinct ill-humour.
"Keep off those cliffs, Miss Freyne. You see, there really is a war somewhere, a real war, and the German Emperor is not yet at Runnymede."
"You'd like us to keep off the cliffs," said Gheena. "No doubt."
Mr. Stafford suddenly allowed his ill-humour to pass to laughter.
"War includes many things which you have not even dreamt of," he said, grinning. "Keep away from it."
To which Gheena returned that so far as she could see, people kept away from it who ought to be in it, or perhaps they did not keep away.
Here she stopped abruptly and Darby's voice rose cheerily. They had found.
Scent was of the poorest. A small red fox, put up out of a clump of gorse, loped into the wood, and though they hunted fairly well in covert, even the harrier noses were at fault outside.
This fox topped the hill and made for a clump of trees about a mile away across rough heathery ground.
When the wood had given up the branch-slashed and irritated Field, they kept to a boggy track leading to the spinny where they were making for--all but Darby, who rode with his hounds, risking the rough broken ground and the narrow rotten fences, mere uprights of soft earth, darned together with heather and fern. At his heels, exactly upon them, came Miss Delorme, crying "Oh! Oh! glorious!" as her horse stumbled and slipped, left completely to himself.