“I’m not though, really. And you must not make me out an invalid,” answered Lilian, with a smile. “I’m far from that.”
“Then come and see the young ostriches.”
Lilian readily assented, and the whole party moved thither accordingly.
“Well, Miss Laura, you’re looking all the better for your change of air; in fact, blooming,” remarked Claverton, who was walking beside her. “By the way, where’s the twin?”
“Ethel? Oh, she’s down at the ostrich enclosure, where we are going. Mr Allen is there, too, and Will Jeffreys.”
“Alias Scowling Will. So he’s here, is he?”
“Yes. But I can’t return you the compliment you just paid me. You look as if you had been up all night for a week,” answered Laura, with a spice of demure malice.
“Oh, don’t make personal remarks; it’s rude,” murmured Claverton, languidly.
“Ha—ha,” struck in Naylor. “Claverton’s been getting on the spree, I expect, now that you two are not there to keep him in order. And now here we are,” he went on, as they arrived at an improvised yard some twenty feet square, wherein a number of little oval-shaped woolly things were running about. “They are strong little beggars, not a seedy one among the lot.”
They had not been long hatched, and as they scuttled about, stopping occasionally to peck at the chopped lucerne strewn on the ground, they were just the size and shape of the parent egg, plus legs and a neck. Naylor picked one of them up.