"You're staying at the Royal Palm, then?"
"Near it," corrected Brice. "To be exact, in the darkest corner of its big gardens. The turf is soft and springy. The solitude is perfect, too—unless some nightwatchman gets too vigilant."
He spoke lightly, even airily, through his pain and weakness. But, as before, his every faculty was on guard. A born and trained expert in reading human nature, he felt this giant somehow suspected him and was trying to trap him in an inaccuracy. Wherefore, he fenced, verbally, calmly confident he could outpoint his clumsier antagonist.
"You don't look like the kind of man who need sleep out of doors," replied Standish, speaking slowly, as one who chooses his every word with care, and with his cold blue eyes unobtrusively scanning Gavin's battered face. "That's the bedroom for bums. You aren't a bum. Even if your manner, and the way you fought out yonder, didn't prove that. A bum doesn't walk all this way and back, on a hot day, unless for a handout. And you—"
"But a handout is just what I asked for," Gavin caught him up. "When I brought Bobby Burns back I traded on the trifling little service by asking Miss Standish if I could get a job here. It was impertinent of me, I know. And I was sorry as soon as I'd done it. But she told me, in effect, that you were 'firing, not hiring.' So I—"
"Why did you want a job with me?" insisted Standish. "Rather than with any of a dozen farmers or country house people along here?"
And, this time, any fool could have read the stark suspicion in his tone and in the hard blue eyes.
"For several reasons," said Brice, coolly. "In the first place, I had brought home your dog. In the second, I had taken a fancy to him, as he had to me, and it would be pleasant working at a place where I could be with such a chum. In the third place, Miss Standish was kind enough to say pretty much the same things about me that you've just said. She knew I wasn't a tramp, who might be expected to decamp with the lawn-mower or the spoons. Another landowner might not have been so complimentary, when I applied for work and had no references. In the fourth, you seem to have a larger and more pretentious place here than most of your near neighbors. I—I can't think of any better reasons, just now."
"H'm!" mused Standish, frowning down on the recumbent man, and then looking across in perplexity at Claire.
What he read in the girl's eyes seemed to shame him, just a little. For, as he turned back to Gavin, there was an apologetic aspect on his bearded face. Brice decided to force the playing. Before his host could speak or Claire could interfere, he rose to a sitting position, with some effort and more pain, and, clutching the head of the couch, lurched to his feet.