Hazel.
“A niece of mine’s coming up to-morrow to stay a bit,” announced old Hesketh, a few days later.
“Oh, but—I say, won’t we rather be making a crowd?” protested Dick. “Had no end of a jolly time, you know, Mr Hesketh; but—er—wouldn’t put you out for the world.”
“Don’t you bother your head about that, young buffalo hunter,” answered the old man. “You’re not crowding me any. I’ll tell you when you are. So you’ve had a good time, eh?”
“Splendid,” said Dick, heartily. “The shoot just is good, and as for this air, why, I never felt so fit in my life.”
Old Hesketh nodded, and surveyed the speaker approvingly. The latter certainly looked as he had declared he felt—fit. His face, tanned a fine brown, was the picture of health. Out all day and every day, often having to work hard for his sport, whether for hours among the cliffs and crags stalking klip-springers or reebok, or toiling up to some high ridge on the chance of getting a shot or two into the herd of baboons which usually frequented the other side, or one or other of the varied forms of sport the place afforded, Dick Selmes had attained the pink of hard condition.
“Well, then, don’t be in a hurry to run away,” rejoined old Hesketh. “Though I dare say it’s slow enough of evenings with a couple of old fellows like me and Greenoak.”
“Thanks,” remarked the latter drily, and Dick spluttered.
“Some one young about the place’ll make things more lively, anyhow,” went on the old man. “And there’s room and to spare, and a welcome for all.”
Needless to say, Dick Selmes devoted a good deal of the intervening time to speculation on the subject of the expected arrival. Even as his host had said, “some one young” would be an acquisition, and then he wondered how old Hesketh, who seemed about a hundred, could own a niece to whom that definition applied. A grand-niece perhaps he had meant. Then, too, would she prove an acquisition? And a vision rose up within his mind of some awkward, half-educated girl brought up on just such a place as this, unused to the refinements of life, proportionately without ideas, and possibly given to affectation. Nor was Greenoak in a position to enlighten him upon the point, knowing nothing of old Hesketh’s relations.