“Beryl! Beryl!” rang out a clear, child-voice, crescendo. “Oh, there you are. I thought she had gone to the garden, Dr Pentridge,” this last back over a shoulder, and Iris came tearing along the path, tossing back the wealth of her gold-brown hair. After her, in more leisurely fashion, came Pentridge.
He started on seeing me, so plainly, so unmistakably, that, keenly observant, I at once set up the theory within my own mind that he had come to find Beryl alone, with a purpose of course. The child could easily have been got rid of, but I—well, that was a different matter.
“Ha, Holt! Hard at it as usual?” he said, with rather a forced geniality.
“Not particularly hard. Only filling up an odd moment.”
He told us that he had just received letters by a messenger who had ridden out from Fort Lamport, letters relating to his pending negotiations, which would render it necessary for him to leave as soon as possible; in fact, that very afternoon if it could possibly be managed. He would have to go straight home from there, so supposed it would be a final good-bye, though we should all meet again soon—in fact, quite soon, he hoped.
I don’t know whether I did, and that for obvious reasons. However, it was manifest that he wanted to have a talk with Beryl, and he should have it, so far as I was concerned; to which end I started in on a battle of chaff with Iris, which kept her busy for a few minutes, then craftily manoeuvred her further down the kloof to look at and talk over a couple of bees’ nests we had been planning to take out. This was all right enough, but what does the little fiend do next but splutter out—
“Can you keep a secret, Kenrick? Because if so I’ll tell you one. Pentridge is awfully smashed on Beryl.”
“I should say Dr Pentridge if I was a little girl,” I formulated to the accompaniment of rather a ghastly grin. “Well, is that the secret? because if so I haven’t said I could keep one yet.”
“Ach! Well, you won’t say I said so, hey?”
“I won’t say anything at all about it, Iris,” I answered magisterially. “And little girls oughtn’t to think about such things.”