"Don't ask me," I returned, bewildered. "I didn't know he'd 'taken' any name at all."
Colonel Fielding glanced at me again as if he wondered whether I had got a touch of sun, and said:
"But I thought you were ... er ... quite an old friend of his? And when you said just now that you knew him as Richard Wynn——"
"This is going to be very difficult to explain," I exclaimed, helplessly. "But we can't stand here till ten o'clock. We'll talk going along."
We went on walking slowly along the road; Elizabeth having disappeared with that other young man and his two names.
I went on: "Why did he 'take' the name of Holiday?"
"Why, because his uncle wished it," was Colonel Fielding's reply, still in that voice of not being able to make out why I didn't know all this already. "You did know—didn't you?—that his ... er ... uncle was that old Mr. Holiday who owned all the property about here; the white house, the lodge, the Prices' farm, and all the lot?"
"Yes, I'd heard that."
"Well, about five years ago this old man, who was a hardened old ... er ... bachelor, thought he'd like to leave his property to his favourite nephew, who happened to be our friend. Dick was then in Canada. Did you know he'd gone in for ranching in Canada?"
"Yes, I knew 'Mr. Wynn' had," said I.