Mountain Magic by Susan Barrie Page A

frock! ... It is wonderful!” he declared. And then with a slight air of proprietorship he took her by the aim and piloted her into the restaurant.
    It was one of those semi-cellar-like restaurants, so many of which are to be found in places like Munich, and the novelty of it appealed to Toni almost as much as the food, which was excellent. Pierre insisted on ordering a bottle of wine with their meal, and a pseudo-gypsy orchestra played folk music while they ate.
    It was a change from the inevitable accordions and zithers, and Toni was quite beguiled by it. Pierre asked her whether she had a favourite piece of music, and she named a Viennese waltz, and as he seemed to be on very good terms with the leader of the orchestra it was played for her at once. With a rush of colour to her cheeks, and sparkling eyes, Toni thanked the leader of the orchestra, and then thanked Pierre in an undertone.
    “It was nice of you,” she said.
    Pierre, his handsome dark eyes rolling with pleasure, declared that it was nothing.
    “I am happy the unpleasant Englishman scared you so much the other morning,” he remarked in a soft undertone, “for otherwise we might not have got to know one another so well, or so soon, nein ? ”
    Toni experienced a minor uneasy moment. She was not accustomed to masculine admiration, but she knew that she was looking at it in Pierre’s eyes, and she hoped he wouldn’t get any wrong ideas into his head. She even thought she ought to insist on paying for her lunch, but he would not allow that. He threatened to get quite excited about her un-feminine independence, and she had to drop her insistence.
    She was sorry that she had to rush away and leave him before their coffee was brought to the table, but she promised to be at the staff car in good time for the return journey home.
    “Four o’clock , ” he reminded her anxiously. “If you are any later the driver will not wait. ”
    The one thing she did not bargain for was the length of time it took to have her hair washed and set—and also shorn slightly, for the assistant declared it was too long—and so many improvements made to her face and her nails that she hardly recognised herself when the slight ordeal was over.
    She had refused to allow her nails to be varnished, but they had lost their broken, stubby look, and some hand cream massaged into them had already worked miracles. Her face was the biggest miracle of all—in her own opinion—and it seemed to glow back at her when she gazed at herself in the mirror. It reminded her of the smooth sides of a peach, and her mouth was a flaunting scarlet. She had refused eye-shadow, b u t had allowed a touch of mascara to be applied to her lashes, with the result that her eyes looked positively enormous, and had acquired a depth of colour that was fascinating.
    As for her hair, it was like a feathery, burnished cap topping her slimness, and she knew that it was an immense improvement.
    When she was paying her bill the young woman who had attended to her picked up a perfume spray and sprayed her with it.
    “Now you will smell like a garden of flowers,” she remarked, smilingly, and Toni was weakly induced to buy a phial of the perfume. She also bought lipstick and powder, and emerged from the shop hugging her purchases up in her arms.
    But, to her horror, she had seen that it was twenty minutes past four, and she had to find her way to the appointed rendezvous where the car waited for her. Or she hoped it still waited for her...
    But the streets were unfamiliar, and she lost her way several times, and by the time she arrived the car had gone. She gazed desperately-round her, looking for it, but there was no sign of the pale grey convertible in which she had travelled so blith el y that morning.
    She remembered that Pierre had warned her that the driver would not wait. She had hardly believed him at the time, for it seemed unreasonable not to wait just a short while for anyone who might have been held up, as