Something of a Plot.
Kenneth Kershaw narrowly scanned the face of this very opportune new arrival, and decided that he didn’t know him from Adam. The other looked at him no less fixedly, and it was clear that he did not know him from Colvin.
Colvin, again? What the deuce was the game now? But he decided to play up to the rôle. He might get at something.
“So you know where I have just come from, eh, ou’ maat?” he said. “Now where is that?”
“Ah! ah! Miss Wenlock is a pretty girl, isn’t she?” rejoined the other meaningly. “Ja, Colvin, you are a slim kerel. Prettier girl than Aletta, isn’t she?”
Aletta? That must be the Boer girl Colvin was supposed to be entangled with, decided Kenneth quickly. But what was her other name, and who the devil was this good-looking young Dutchman who talked English so well? Aletta’s brother possibly. He just replied “H’m,” which might have meant anything, and waited for the other to continue.
“What will Aletta say when she knows?” went on the Boer, and his bantering tone, through which the smouldering glow of malice underlying it could not entirely be kept from showing, gave Kenneth his cue.
“Say? Oh, but she need not know,” he answered with just a touch of well-simulated alarm.
“Ha! ha! ha!” laughed the other. “Need not know? I think, friend Colvin, I have got you on toast, as you English say, for I shall take very good care she does know. The fact is I have been watching you for some time—from the time you met Miss Wenlock at Park Station right up till now, and I fancy Aletta won’t have very much more to say to you when she hears about it all.”
“Oh, but look here,” went on Kenneth, still affecting alarm. “You’re not going to give the show away, old sportsman. Dash it all, it isn’t cricket!”