Up the single street two persons are walking, and the summer loveliness of the fair English scene is something of a contrast to the vaster, but not less beautiful, landscape in which we last saw these two framed; for we have seen them before.
Now they gain the modest, but clean and comfortable farm-house lodgings overlooking the village and the sea, and which is nearly the only accommodation so out-of-the-way a place can offer.
“Post in,” says Lalanté, womanlike eagerly making for several letters spread out upon the table. “Why here’s one from father, forwarded on. Oh I am glad. He hasn’t written for quite a long time.”
“Getting homesick, child?”
“Darling, you know I’m not. Still I shan’t be sorry to be duly installed at dear old Seven Kloofs.”
“But there are no shops.”
“Don’t tease. Oh, but—” and her eyes grew soft—“if you only knew how he appreciated what you did, I mean that offer you made him. He says it was the saving of him.”
“In the words I used to him on a somewhat similar occasion—‘shut up’,” rejoins Wyvern, stopping her mouth with a kiss. “Here’s a yarn from Fleetwood! Now we’ll each see what each says.”
“Joe’s news is good,” he goes on, glancing down the sheet. “He’s working the oracle fine about the plunder, but he says that nearly six months of England, and that mostly London, is about enough for any self-respecting up-country man, and wants to go back again when we do.”
“Why of course,” absently and not immediately. Then with a start. “How dreadful! Oh how dreadful!”