The next morning Dick Selmes was up before sunrise, and, taking his gun, went off on foot to a hoek where he knew he should find a troop of wild guinea-fowl. He was successful, too, and as the splendid game birds dropped, one after another—for he had managed to break up the troop, and they were thus lying well—the keen and unmitigated enjoyment of the sport for the next half-hour was such as to leave no room for any outside thought or speculation. Picking up the seven of them he could find—two were runners, and of course without a dog were hopelessly lost—he started back homeward.
Now, seven full-grown guinea-fowl slung round one constitute no light load over three miles of rough and stony ground, and by the time Dick Selmes reached the house he had had more than enough of such exercise. When he did so reach it he became alive to the fact that a Cape cart, outspanned, with its harness hung over the splashboard, stood before the door. Now his curiosity would be satisfied.
Flinging down the birds, he entered the living-room. It was occupied by one person, a female, and she vigorously dusting.
She turned as he entered. Heavens! What was this? Red hair, a broad face thickly sown with large freckles, a wide mouth, and forty if a day! So this was old Hesketh’s niece. “Some one young” had been his definition of her, and it was she who was to make things lively by reason of the said juvenility!
“As ugly as sin,” was his mental verdict. But aloud, politely, “Good morning. I must introduce myself. My name is Selmes; but—I don’t think your uncle was expecting you quite so early.”
The other stared.
“Ma what? Eh, but the laddie’s clean daft—or is it only haverin’ he is? Not but it’s a braw bit laddie too”—with an approving glance at Dick’s handsome face and tall proportions.
“Oh, Lord!” thought the latter, with a mental shudder. So this was the housemate who was to make them all young again with her youth and liveliness. Decidedly he must get Greenoak to invent some pretext for changing their quarters. Then the comic side struck him. Compared with himself, no doubt old Hesketh regarded this weird person, who talked broad Scotch, as “young.”
“You are very energetic,” he said pleasantly, for she had resumed her dusting. “Not at all tired after your trek, eh?”
“A’m never that,” was the decisive reply.