“Wow!” shouted James.
“What?” asked the girl, startled.
“Touch of cramp,” said James. He was thrilling all over. That wild hope had been realized.
“It was daddy’s dying wish that we should marry,” said the girl.
“And dashed sensible of him, too; dashed sensible,” said James warmly.
“And yet,” she went on, a little wistfully, “I sometimes wonder—”
“Don’t!” said James. “Don’t! You must respect daddy’s dying wish. There’s nothing like daddy’s dying wish; you can’t beat it. So he’s coming here tomorrow, is he? Capital, capital. To lunch, I suppose? Excellent! I’ll run down and tell Mrs. Who-Is-It to lay in another chop.”
It was with a gay and uplifted heart that James strolled the garden and smoked his pipe next morning. A great cloud seemed to have rolled itself away from him. Everything was for the best in the best of all possible worlds. He had finished The Secret Nine and shipped it off to Mr. McKinnon, and now as he strolled there was shaping itself in his mind a corking plot about a man with only half a face who lived in a secret den and terrorized London with a series of shocking murders. And what made them so shocking was the fact that each of the victims, when discovered, was found to have only half a face too. The rest had been chipped off, presumably by some blunt instrument.
The thing was coming out magnificently, when suddenly his attention was diverted by a piercing scream. Out of the bushes fringing the river that ran beside the garden burst the apple-cheeked housekeeper.
“Oh, sir! Oh, sir! Oh, sir!”
“What is it?” demanded James irritably.
“Oh, sir! Oh, sir! Oh, sir!”
“Yes, and then what?”
“The little dog, sir! He’s in the river!”
“Well, whistle him to come out.”
“Oh, sir, do come quick! He’ll be drowned!”
James followed her through the bushes, taking off his coat as he went. He was saying to himself, “I will not rescue this dog. I do not like the dog. It is high time he had a bath, and in any case it would be much simpler to stand on the bank and fish for him with a rake. Only an ass out of a Leila J. Pinckney book would dive into a beastly river to save—”
At this point he dived. Toto, alarmed by the splash, swam rapidly for the bank, but James was too quick for him. Grasping him firmly by the neck, he scrambled ashore and ran for the house, followed by the housekeeper.
The girl was seated on the porch. Over her there bent the tall soldierly figure of a man with keen eyes and greying hair. The housekeeper raced up.
“Oh, miss! Toto! In the river! He saved him! He plunged in and saved him!”
The girl drew a quick breath.
“Gallant, damme! By Jove! By gad! Yes, gallant, by George!” exclaimed the soldierly man.
The girl seemed to wake from a reverie.
“Uncle Henry, this is Mr. Rodman. Mr. Rodman, my guardian, Colonel Carteret.”
“Proud to meet you, sir,” said the colonel, his honest blue eyes glowing as he fingered his short crisp moustache. “As fine a thing as I ever heard of, damme!”
“Yes, you are brave—brave,” the girl whispered.
“I am wet—wet,” said James, and went upstairs to change his clothes.
When he came down for lunch, he found to his relief that the girl had decided not to join them, and Colonel Carteret was silent and preoccupied. James, exerting himself in his capacity of host, tried him with the weather, golf, India, the Government, the high cost of living, first-class cricket, the modern dancing craze, and murderers he had met, but the other still preserved that strange, absentminded silence. It was only when the meal was concluded and James had produced cigarettes that he came abruptly out of his trance.
“Rodman,” he said, “I should like to speak to you.”
“Yes?” said James, thinking it was about time.
“Rodman,” said Colonel Carteret, “or rather, George—I may call you George?” he added, with a sort of wistful diffidence that had a singular charm.
“Certainly,” replied James, “if you wish it. Though my name is James.”
“James, eh? Well, well, it amounts to the same thing, eh, what, damme, by gad?” said the colonel with a momentary return of his bluff soldierly manner. “Well, then, James, I have something that I wish to say to you. Did Miss Maynard—did Rose happen to tell you anything about myself in—er—in connection with herself?”
“She mentioned that you and she were engaged to be married.”
The colonel’s tightly drawn lips quivered.
“No longer,” he said.
“What?”
“No, John, my boy.”
“James.”
“No, James, my boy, no longer. While you were upstairs changing your clothes she told me—breaking down, poor child, as she spoke—that she wished our engagement to be at an end.”
James half rose from the table, his cheeks blanched.
“You don’t mean that!” he gasped.
Colonel Carteret nodded. He was staring out of the window, his fine eyes set in a look of pain.
“But this is nonsense!” cried James. “This is absurd! She—she mustn’t be allowed to chop and change like this. I mean to say, it—it isn’t fair—”
“Don’t think of me, my boy.”
“I’m not—I mean, did she give any reason?”
“Her eyes did.”
“Her eyes did?”
“Her eyes, when she looked at you on the porch, as you stood there—young, heroic—having just saved the life of the dog she loves. It is you who have won that tender heart, my boy.”
“Now, listen,” protested James, “you aren’t going to sit there and tell me that a girl falls in love with a man just because he saves her dog from drowning?”
“Why, surely,” said Colonel Carteret, surprised. “What better reason could she have?” He sighed. “It is the old, old story, my boy. Youth to youth. I am an old man. I should have known—I should have foreseen—yes, youth to youth.”
“You aren’t a bit old.”
“Yes, yes.”
“No, no.”
“Yes, yes.”
“Don’t keep on saying yes, yes!” cried James, clutching at his hair. “Besides, she wants a steady old buffer—a steady, sensible man of medium age—to look after her.”
Colonel Carteret shook his head with a gentle smile.
“This is mere quixotry, my boy. It
