“You have been here before?” he said.

“Why, yes; and about this time last year, wasn’t it, Gertie?  I understand a hermit lived here once.”

“A hermit might almost live here to-day,” said Frank.

“You are right, sir,” said the Major.

* * * * *

Frank began to wonder, as he walked, as to why this man was on the roads.  Curiously enough, he believed his statement that he had been in the army.  The air of him seemed the right thing.  A militia captain would have swaggered more; a complete impostor would have given more details.  Frank began to fish for information.

“You have been long on the roads?” he said.

The Major did not appear to hear him.

“You have been long on the roads?” persisted Frank.

The other glanced at him furtively and rather insolently.  “The younger man first, please.”

Frank smiled.

“Oh, certainly!” he said.  “Well, I have left Cambridge at the end of June only.”

“Ah!  Anything disgraceful?”

“You won’t believe me, I suppose, if I say ’No’?”

“Oh!  I daresay I shall.”

“Well, then, ‘No.’”

“Then may I ask—?”

“Oh, yes!  I was kicked out by my father—­I needn’t go into details.  I sold up my things and came out.  That’s all!”

“And you mean to stick to it?”

“Certainly—­at least for a year or two.”

“That’s all right.  Well, then—­Major—­what did we say?  Trustcott?  Ah, yes, Trustcott.  Well, then, I think we might add ‘Eleventh Hussars’; that’s near enough.  The final catastrophe was, I think, cards.  Not that I cheated, you understand.  I will allow no man to say that of me.  But that was what was said.  A gentleman of spirit, you understand, could not remain in a regiment when such things could be said.  Then we tumbled downhill; and I’ve been at this for four years.  And, you know, sir, it might be worse!”

Frank nodded.

Naturally he did not believe as necessarily true this terse little story, and he was absolutely certain that if cards were mixed up in it at all, obviously the Major had cheated.  So he just took the story and put it away, so to speak.  It was to form, he perceived, the understanding on which they consorted together.  Then he began to wonder about the girl.  The Major soon supplied a further form.

“And Mrs. Trustcott, here?  Well, she joined me, let us say, rather more than eighteen months ago.  We had been acquainted before that, however.  That was when I was consenting to serve as groom to some—­er—­some Jewish bounder in town.  Mrs. Trustcott’s parents live in town.”

The girl, who had been trudging patiently a foot or two behind them, just glanced up at Frank and down again.  He wondered exactly what her own attitude was to all this.  But she made no comment.

“And now we know one another,” finished the Major in a tone of genial finality.  “So where are you taking us—­er—­Mr. Gregory?”