“But I’ve no intention of seeing any such sight,” she objected serenely. “I’ll wait for you a little way off while you make your investigations. That’ll be all right.”
Wyvern caught one swift look which rejoiced his heart. She had resolved not to let the whole afternoon go by without him if she could be with him. But there was more beneath her plan than he suspected. She did not mean to afford her father any opportunity of quarrelling with him, as he almost certainly would, in his then mood, if they were alone together for any space of time just then. In most things Lalanté contrived to get her own way.
Now with a rush and a racket, two small boys came tumbling in, hot and ruddy with their scramblings about the veldt. Each exhibited, in triumph, a bunch of long feathers from the tail of the mouse-bird, or rather of many mouse-birds; the spoil of their bow and spear—or rather, catapults.
“Here you are, dad. You’re set up in pipe-cleaners now for some time to come. Hullo, Mr Wyvern. There’ll be enough for you too.”
They chucked the feathers down unceremoniously upon the table, and began to draw up chairs. But Lalanté interposed.
“No. No you don’t, Charlie—Frank—away you go, and do the soap and basin trick. I’m not going to have you sitting down to table straight out of the veldt,” she said decisively. “Come—scoot—do you hear?”
“Oh, all right. Man—Mr Wyvern, but there’s a big troop of guinea-fowl down by the second draai. I hope you brought your gun.”
“Did I say ‘Scoot’?” repeated Lalanté, the disciplinarian.
They lingered no further after that. They were good-looking boys, with their sister’s large grey eyes. In a trice they were back again, keeping things lively with their chatter, and the girl encouraged them. There was thunder in the air, she recognised, and her main anxiety was to avert the impending storm. And afterwards, before she retired to put on her riding-gear, she managed to impress upon the two youngsters that they were to help entertain their guest for all they knew how until her return, which duty—Wyvern being a prime favourite with them—was not an onerous one; moreover with them Lalanté’s word was law.
Their ride forth was not exactly a success. Lalanté, bright, beautiful, sparkling, kept up a flow of laughing quips, but the more she did so, the more gloomy—grumpy she called it—did her father become. Wyvern, riding by her side, felt all aglow with the pride of possession as he noted every fascinating little trick of speech, or manner, or pose, all absolutely natural and unaffected, and all going to make up the very complete charm of her personality. Not for the first time either did he find himself marvelling how this pride of possession should be his at all. Though only in the early twenties Lalanté had had time and opportunity for “experiences,” but such experiences, however disquieting to the other parties to them, had left her unscathed. She had come to him heart-whole. None before him had ever had power to awaken her. That had been reserved for him, and the awakening had been mutual from the very first.