The next morning Dick Selmes was up before sunrise, and, taking his gun, went off on foot to a hoek where he knew he should find a troop of wild guinea-fowl. He was successful, too, and as the splendid game birds dropped, one after another – for he had managed to break up the troop, and they were thus lying well – the keen and unmitigated enjoyment of the sport for the next half-hour was such as to leave no room for any outside thought or speculation. Picking up the seven of them he could find – two were runners, and of course without a dog were hopelessly lost – he started back homeward.
Now, seven full-grown guinea-fowl slung round one constitute no light load over three miles of rough and stony ground, and by the time Dick Selmes reached the house he had had more than enough of such exercise. When he did so reach it he became alive to the fact that a Cape cart, outspanned, with its harness hung over the splashboard, stood before the door. Now his curiosity would be satisfied.
Flinging down the birds, he entered the living-room. It was occupied by one person, a female, and she vigorously dusting.
She turned as he entered. Heavens! What was this? Red hair, a broad face thickly sown with large freckles, a wide mouth, and forty if a day! So this was old Hesketh’s niece. “Some one young” had been his definition of her, and it was she who was to make things lively by reason of the said juvenility!
“As ugly as sin,” was his mental verdict. But aloud, politely, “Good morning. I must introduce myself. My name is Selmes; but – I don’t think your uncle was expecting you quite so early.”
The other stared.
“Ma what? Eh, but the laddie’s clean daft – or is it only haverin’ he is? Not but it’s a braw bit laddie too” – with an approving glance at Dick’s handsome face and tall proportions.
“Oh, Lord!” thought the latter, with a mental shudder. So this was the housemate who was to make them all young again with her youth and liveliness. Decidedly he must get Greenoak to invent some pretext for changing their quarters. Then the comic side struck him. Compared with himself, no doubt old Hesketh regarded this weird person, who talked broad Scotch, as “young.”
“You are very energetic,” he said pleasantly, for she had resumed her dusting. “Not at all tired after your trek, eh?”
“A’m never that,” was the decisive reply.
“Well, your uncle will appreciate your energy at any rate. We men, left to ourselves, are sure to let things of that sort slide,” – referring to her undertaking.
“Ma – what?”
“Your uncle, Mr Hesketh.”
“The laddie is daft,” she answered with decision. “Mon – but A have nae ony uncle.”
Dick stared, and was destined to stare more in about a second. A faint rustle behind him, combined with what sounded suspiciously like a suppressed gurgle, caused him to wheel sharply round.
Framed in the doorway stood a girl – an exceedingly pretty girl. She had a sweet oval face, dark hair, and well-marked brows, and lustrous eyes to match. These now seemed sparkling and dancing with merriment.
“I am Mr Hesketh’s niece,” began this wholly unexpected vision of beauty. “I suppose we are here earlier than we were expected,” and there was a suspicious unsteadiness in the tones, as if the speaker were gulping down an irresistible peal of laughter.
“Eh, but A do believe he’s been takkin’ me for yeerself, Miss Hazel,” spoke the red-haired woman; and poor Dick, now dead certain that the new-comer had overheard the foregoing dialogue, looked and felt about as big an ass as he had ever looked and felt in his life.
“It’s my old nurse, Elsie McGunn,” explained the girl. “We’ve been travelling ever so many hours, and now she’ll be taking the cart home again after breakfast, and even then can’t sit still and rest.”
“Indeed, I was just admiring such a display of energy,” said Dick, pleasantly.
“Deed, laddie, and ye were just admiring nothing at a’ aboot me,” retorted the plain-spoken Scotswoman, but quite good-naturedly.
The answer made opportunity for the girl to express her stifled feelings, and under cover of it she went off into the hearty merry peal of laughter whose main cause was the dialogue she had overheard between Dick Selmes and her unattractive retainer.
“You have been here before, I suppose, Miss Hesketh?” began Dick.
The other stared.
“Oh, I see,” she said. “But my name isn’t Hesketh – it’s Brandon. Mr Hesketh is my uncle on my mother’s side.”
“Of course. But, as you most likely know, your uncle is a man of few words, and, beyond mentioning the fact that you were coming, gave us no further information. He didn’t even tell us your name. Naturally I didn’t like to appear inquisitive.”
“Naturally,” assented the other; and again the laugh struggled in her eyes, evoked by the recollection of the comical situation for which that lack of inquisitiveness was responsible. “But now – as you have the advantage of me – I have told you who I am, suppose you tell me who you are.”
There was a sweet, sunny frankness about this girl, an utter absence of self-consciousness that made Dick stare. Did they grow many like her in this strange, fascinating country, he wondered? As he told her his identity a new interest came into her eyes, but wholly unsuspected by himself.
“Ay, and is yon Dick Selmes?”
The interruption proceeded from the wielder of the duster, in the further corner of the room.
“Elsie!” cried the girl, half horrified, half mirthful. “You are forgetting yourself. You needn’t be quite so familiar, at any rate.”
“Eh! An’ would we be makkin’ a stranger of the laddie?” tranquilly replied the irrepressible Scotswoman.
Dick burst into a hearty roar.
“Quite right, Elsie,” he cried. “I believe we’re going to be jolly good friends, you and I.”
This was a character, he decided – a howling joke. He was almost sorry she was going back again directly, whereas when he had first heard the announcement he had been anything but sorry. Then the sound of voices outside told that the master of the place and the other guest had returned.
Old Hesketh greeted his niece affectionately, but undemonstratively, as was his way.
“This is Harley Greenoak,” he said. “You may have heard of him.”
The girl’s face lit up with interest.
“I should think so,” she said, as she put forth her hand. “Who hasn’t?”
“Oh, about nine hundred million people, I suppose,” tranquilly answered the subject of this implied exordium. “I don’t expect that leaves many more in the world.”
“Well, there’s no one in South Africa who hasn’t, at any rate,” rejoined the girl. And Dick Selmes, confound it, was half ashamed of a sneaking satisfaction that Harley Greenoak’s beard was rapidly turning grey.
“That you, Elsie?” said old Hesketh, shaking hands with the privileged retainer. “Well, and you haven’t managed to pick up a husband yet? Ho, ho!”
“Yan’s the wurrd, Mr Hesketh. They’re to be had for the pickin’ up. But it’ll end in ma havin’ to come and tak’ care o’ yeerself, A’m thinkin’. Yan dust,” designating her recent work, “must have been lyin’ aroound for a yeer at least.”
This retort, naïvely ambiguous, given with perfect equability, raised a laugh among its hearers, who chose to read but one of its two potential meanings.
“Now, Uncle Eph,” said the girl, decisively.