“And you are apt to get him out of hot water rather easily. Oh, I’ve heard all about it.”
“That was part of my charge. It was all in the day’s work. Over and about that, I’ve grown quite fond of the boy. He’s as taking a lad as I’ve ever known.”
Hazel agreed, and promptly turned the subject from the belauded Dick Selmes to other matters. The while, she was thinking; and if her companion could have read her thoughts—and even his penetration couldn’t do that—why, it is possible that he would have run up against the biggest surprise he had ever experienced in his life.
Even so Harley Greenoak was conscious of some modicum of surprise; and that was evoked by the way in which his companion was making him talk—drawing him, so to say—and, somehow, the experience was a pleasant one. Not until afterwards did it occur to him that he had come near being thrown a trifle off his balance by the soft insidious flatteries of this beautiful girl, reclining there in an attitude of easy grace. The warm, sunlit air, the height of space, looking down, as it were, upon two worlds, the free openness of it all was Greenoak’s natural heritage, and under no other surroundings could he be so thoroughly at his best. So she led him on to talk, and he had a dry, quaint, philosophical way of handling things which amused and appealed to her immensely. Suddenly the report of a gun, just beneath, together with the cry of dogs hot-foot on a quarry.
“That’s Dick. He’s worked round to this side of the farm,” said Greenoak. “Shall we go down and see what he’s been doing, for it strikes me we’ve been sitting here rather a long time?”
“Oh, you have found it long, then?” with mock offended air, then colouring slightly as she realised what an utter banality she had fired off for the benefit of a man of Harley Greenoak’s calibre.
“No, I haven’t,” he answered quite evenly. “I’ve enjoyed the lounge and the talk very much.” And then Hazel felt more disgusted with herself still.
“Let’s go back to the house,” she said. “I believe it’s getting rather hot.”
She chatted as they wound their way downwards along the bush-path, but not so brightly as when they had come up it. Somewhat wonderingly, Greenoak noted that she displayed no interest in the absent Dick. The latter arrived not long after themselves.
“There you are, Miss Brandon, I’ve redeemed my pledge,” he cried. “Got a whacking big bush-buck ram. Do come and look at it.”