He had hardly uttered these cryptic words when a pretty young woman opened the door which gave on to the stable-yard from the house:  “Dinner-time!” she called out merrily.

Both men dropped the brooms they were holding, and going towards the door disappeared.

As they did so, Timmy heard the words:—­“She’s a peach—­thinks herself one too—­oh! the merry widder!”

The little boy waited a moment.  He took a long look round the sunny, and now unnaturally tidy, stable-yard.  Then he got up, shut his book, and put it sedately into his pocket.  Flick seemed unwilling to move, so Timmy turned and called sharply:—­“Flick! come along at once!”

The dog jumped down and ran up to his master.  Timmy walked across the big, flat, white stones, kicking a pebble as he went.  At last, when he got close to the open gate, he hop-scotched, propelling the pebble far into the road.

He was extremely disturbed and surprised.  He went over and over again what he had heard the two men say.  The absurd suspicion of his father filled him with angry hurt disgust.  Why only yesterday the plan of the village clubhouse had come from the architect!  And then that extraordinary disconcerting hint about his godfather?  Godfrey Radmore belonged in Timmy’s imagination, first to himself, secondly to his parents, and then, in a much less close way, to the rest of the Tosswill family.  A sensation of strong-dislike to the still unknown new tenant of The Trellis House welled up in his secretive little heart, and instead of going on round the village, he turned back and made his way straight home.

As he walked along the short avenue which led to the front door of Old Place he saw his mother kneeling on her gardening mat.  He stepped up on to the grass hoping to elude her sharp eyes and ears, but she had already seen him.

“Hullo, Timmy!” she called out cheerfully.  “What have you been doing with yourself all this time?”

“I’ve been sitting reading in the stable-yard of The Trellis House.”

“That seems rather a funny thing to do, when you might have been here helping your Mummy,” but she said the words very kindly.  Then suddenly the mention of The Trellis House reminded her of Godfrey Radmore.  “I’ve got a great piece of news!” she exclaimed.  “Guess who’s coming here to spend the week-end with us, Timmy?”

He looked at her gravely and said:—­“I think I know, Mum.”

She felt taken aback, as she so often was with her strange little son.

“I don’t think you do,” she cried briskly.

“I think it’s”—­he hesitated a moment—­“Major Radmore, my godfather.”

She was very, very surprised.  Then her quick Scotch mind fastened on the one unfamiliar word.  “Why Major Radmore?” she asked.

Timmy looked a little confused.  “I—­I don’t know,” he muttered unwillingly.  “I thought he was a soldier, Mum.”

“Of course he was a soldier.  But he isn’t a soldier now.”