Marvan, who was 'it', had hurled the ball at Ianthe as she dashed for a base—it happened to be the Altar Stone. Marvan missed, and while she tore after the ball Ianthe jumped on to the stone and danced in triumph up and down, screaming derision after her. Suddenly, Nuaman stepped out from behind one of the standing stones at the back of Ianthe. He stood perfectly still for a moment, watching her. Then I suppose he must have spoken, for she whirled round and the moment she saw him she dropped off the stone and slunk towards him like a scolded puppy. Marvan, too, who had found the ball and was running shrieking back with it, stopped in her tracks and stood as silent as a fish.
I walked across. Nuaman, turning swiftly from Ianthe, gave me his quick, bright smile. “Hallo!” I said. “What's the matter?''
“Oh, I changed my mind!” he cried gaily. “And then, I came up to find Katia. Mrs. Sarkissian wants her.” Katia clapped her hand to her brow.
“My goodness!” she exclaimed. “She say mustard make the supper hot!”
Before I had found a clue to what she meant she began bustling about collecting up the tea−things and I stooped to help her. I did not mind our game coming to an end: it was time to go, anyway. But that extraordinary change of atmosphere when Nuaman appeared puzzled me and annoyed me a little. And a more curious thing was, as I saw looking round from the tea−things, that Nuaman seemed to be speaking resentfully to Dr Ravelin who had come back into the circle. The Doctor shrugged his shoulders, took out his handkerchief, blew his nose, shrugged his shoulders again and seemed distinctly ill at ease. Then, walking over and clearing his throat, he said he thought he ought to be getting back to the house.
We all helped to gather up the things. The little awkwardness lasted only a minute or two and then Nuaman was as gay and friendly and the Doctor as much at ease as ever, and the girls in perfectly good spirits again, though well−behaved now.
Dr Ravelin had only part of my attention going back. Nuaman had as much to point out as he, but his were the things the Doctor did not see: a yellow pimpernel growing by a tiny trickle of water under the bank of the road, a stone−chat on the hillside, and the small speck of a kestrel hovering far away over the Park.
“You weren't in your workshop so long, after all,” I said. “Have you finished your job? What is it?” “Oh no,” he said. “It's not finished yet. I shall have to work hard to get it ready.”
“It has to be ready by a certain time, has it? Shall I be able to see it?”
I remember he had picked up a couple of pebbles and he clinked them together in his cupped hands as he glanced sideways up at me, gently teasing.
“Oh yes! You shall see it. Perhaps I'm making it for you.” “What can it be? Won't you tell me?”
“Ah no! You must wait till it's finished and ready for you.” “I see. It's to be a surprise, is it?”
“Yes, yes! That's it! A surprise!” And he threw his pebbles away and sprang laughing up the bank.
We waited at the front door for the two girls to come up. They had lingered behind us on the way down. They passed between us into the hall and it seemed to me that Ianthe gave me a significant look—a kind of 'I told you so' look—and made a little wry grimace. They went upstairs and Nuaman followed them.
Katia rolled her round eyes at me as she bore away the basket. “Too bad for all,” she remarked. “Thank to goodness the Doctor there. Just so Ianthe become sorry. Become weeping.”
“Well she's a silly little thing if she does,” I said. Then, as I watched Katia go off to the kitchen, another interpretation occurred to me. I suppose it might have occurred to me before if I had bothered to study her particular misuses of English vowels. So that, I thought, turning a number of things over in my memory, is how Katia in the tangles of her own mind accounts for his cousins' obedience to Sir No Man!
(9)
I don't think I took my own guess at Katia's meaning very seriously; but still, I could not help teasing Nuaman when I saw him again the next day. It was the first cloudy day, I remember, that we had had since I came to Ringstones. I had thought of going swimming in the afternoon but the dullness of the day made me change my mind. Nuaman had not put in an appearance up to lunch time, so I decided that I would treat myself to a day's freedom and go to Staineshead. I had broken my watch−strap—one of those flexible metal affairs. I suppose I had strained it or loosened it while we were playing in the Stone Circle. My watch fell off in my room that evening and I found that the little flange that hooks the strap on to the watch was broken and the watch itself had stopped. Sarkissian was not going into the town for a day or two, it appeared, so I thought I might as well take the afternoon and evening off and walk across the moor to Staineshead myself. I studied the way on a map I found framed in the library. It seemed plain enough: merely a continuation of the track from Blagill. The whole distance from Blagill to Staineshead by this bridleway over the moor, I reckoned, was a little under seven miles.
I set out soon after lunch, estimating that it would not take me more than two hours to do the four miles, or two and a half if the track was not so good as the old map professed. I was nearly across the Park when I heard a hail and the sound of running feet, and turned to see Nuaman overtaking me.
“Well, Sir No Man,” I said. “Where have you been all day?”
“I've only just got up,” he confessed. “It was such a dull morning I thought I might just as well sleep.” “Ha! You see, the sun doesn't always shine when you want it to!”
He laughed. “No? But perhaps I didn't want it to today. I say, though, where are you going?”
“None of your business,” I retorted, but seeing that he looked puzzled, I relented and told him I was going to Staineshead.
“Oh, but why?” he cried, as though going to Staineshead were a piece of wilful folly.
“Because I want to,” I said. “I happen to have some business to do there. To get my watch−strap mended if you must know.”
He glanced at my bare wrist. “But I can do that for you easily. You don't need to go to Staineshead. Give it to me. I'll do it today. I say, don't go to Staineshead! Come back and let's do something. I tell you what, I'll show you the old mine.”
I had kept steadily on my way, and I shook my head firmly.
“No,” I said. “I'm going because I choose to go, just the same as you chose not to come with us yesterday.” “Dear Daphne,” he said, looking sideways at me with a kind of droll penitence. “I do believe you're vexed
with me.”
“Well, since you raise the subject, I must say that I wasn't very pleased with the way you behaved yesterday afternoon.”
“Yesterday afternoon?” he repeated wonderingly, and then, gaily, “I say, wasn't Katia funny? I bet you never guessed what she meant when she said 'Mustard make the supper hot'.”
“Katia's English defeats me,” I said. “What did she mean? All I could think of was that we were going to have cold meat, but we didn't.”
“No!” he shouted. “She meant musted. E−d, you know. The past tense of must. And she often says make hot for cook. She meant she had to go and make the supper cook.”
“Lord!” I said. “I shall never learn Katia's language. I begin to doubt whether I ever understand a word she says. Do you know, she said something last night that made me think she was trying to tell me that you beat your cousins.”
“Beat Marvan and Ianthe? Well, of course, I do,” he said seriously. I stopped. “What? You do?”