“It is nothing,” he said. “One of the devils had a knife. Must get my sleeve mended to-morrow.”
When Major White came down to breakfast at his hotel the next morning, he found the large room deserted and the windows thrown open to the sun and the garden. He was selecting a table, when a step on the verandah made him look up. Standing in the window, framed, as it were, by sunshine and trees, was Marguerite Wade, in a white dress, with demure lips, and the complexion of a wild rose. She was the incarnation of youth--of that spring-time of life of which the sight tugs at the strings of older hearts; for surely that is the only part of life which is really and honestly worth the living.
Marguerite came forward and shook hands gravely. Major White's left eyebrow quivered for a moment in indication of his usual mild surprise at life and its changing surface.
“Feeling pretty--bobbish?” inquired Marguerite, earnestly.
White's eyebrow went right up and his glass fell.
“Fairly bobbish, thank you,” he answered, looking at her with stupendous gravity.
“You should never judge by appearances,” said White, with a fatherly severity.
Marguerite pursed up her lips, and looked his stalwart frame up and down in silence. Then she suddenly lapsed into her most confidential manner, like a schoolgirl telling her bosom friend, for the moment, all the truth and more than the truth.
“You are surprised to see me here; thought you would be, you know. I knew you were in the hotel; saw your boots outside your door last night; knew they must be yours. You went to bed very early.”
“I have two pairs of boots,” replied the major, darkly.
“Well, to tell you the truth, I have brought papa across. Tony wrote for him to come, and I knew papa would be no use by himself, so I came. I told you long ago that the Malgamite scheme was up a gum-tree, and that seems to be precisely where you are.”
“And so I have come over, and papa and I are going to put things straight.”
“Shouldn't put other people's affairs straight. It does not pay, especially if other people happen to be up a gum-tree--make yourself all sticky, you know.”
Marguerite looked at him doubtfully. “Ah!” she said. “That's what--is it?”
“That is the difference, I suppose, between a man and a woman,” said Marguerite, sitting down at a small table where breakfast had been laid for two. “A man looks on at things going--well, to the dogs--and smokes and thinks it isn't his business. A woman thinks the whole world is her business.”