A perceptible brightening came over the old man’s face. The priest had struck the right chord in saying that Hilary Blachland had been to his friend rather as an only son than as a nephew, and now the thought of having him at his side again was apparent in the lighting up of his face. Then his countenance fell again.
“It’s all very well to say ‘Find out Hilary,’” he said. “But how is it to be done? We last heard of him from South Africa. He was trading in the interior with the natives. Seemed to like the life and could make a little at it.”
“Well, there you are. You can soon find out about him. Although covering a vast area in the vague region geographically defined as South Africa, the European population is one of those wherein everybody knows everybody else, or something about them. Send Percival out. The trip would do him a world of good. You need not tell him its precise object in every particular, I mean of course that he is sent out there to report. But let him know that he is to find Hilary, and he will throw himself into it heart and soul. Then his indirect report will tell us all we want to know.”
“By Jove, Canon, that is sound judgment, and I’ll act upon it!” cried Sir Luke eagerly. “What on earth are your people about that they don’t make you a Cardinal Archbishop? Send Percival! Why, that’ll be the very thing. I shall miss the boy though, while he’s away, but oh, confound it, yes—I would like to see that other scamp again before I die. Here—this can go in the fire,” throwing the draft document into the grate and stirring it up with the poker to make it burn. “We’ll send Percival. Ha! That sounds like his step. Shall we say anything to him now about it? Yes. Here he is.”
[a/]
Chapter Two.
A Waft of Strange News.
“I say, Uncle Luke. Do you happen to be aware that it’s jolly well tiffin time—Hallo, Canon! Didn’t know you were here. How are you?”
He who thus unceremoniously burst in upon them, in blissful ignorance of the momentous matter under discussion and of course of how his own fortunes had been balancing in the scale, was a goodly specimen of English youth, tall, and well-hung, and athletic, but the bright frank sunniness of his face, his straight open glance, and entirely unaffected and therefore unspoiled manner rendered him goodly beyond the average. Percival West and Hilary Blachland were both orphaned sons of two of Sir Luke’s sisters, and had been to him even as his own children. There was a difference of many years between their ages, however, and their characters were totally dissimilar, as we have heard set forth.