She didn’t kiss her future daughter-in-law, but she tapped her lightly on the shoulder and trudged back with head erect through the rain.
“It’s a bad business,” she said to herself thoughtfully. “He’s rushed his fence and there’s a ditch on the other side of it, deep enough to drown him!”
CHAPTER III
Winn wanted, if possible, a home without rows. He knew very little of homes, and nothing which had made him suppose this ideal likely to be realized.
Still he went on having it, hiding it, and hoping for it.
Once he had come across it. It was the time when he had decided to undertake a mission to Tibet without a government mandate. He wanted young Drummond to go with him. The job was an awkward and dangerous one. Certain authorities had warned Winn that though, if the results were satisfactory, it would certainly be counted in his favor, should anything go wrong no help could be sent to him, and he would be held personally responsible; that is he would be held responsible if he were not dead, which was the most likely outcome of the whole business.
It is easy to test a man on the Indian frontier, and Winn had had his eye on Lionel Drummond for two years. He was a cool-headed, reliable boy, and in some occult and wholly unexpressed way Winn was conscious that he was strongly drawn to him. Winn offered him the job, and even consented, when he was on leave, to visit the Drummonds and talk the matter over with the boy’s parents. It was then that he discovered that people really could have a quiet home.
Mrs. Drummond was a woman of a great deal of character, very great gentleness, and equal courage. She neither cried nor made fusses, and no one could even have imagined her making a noise.
It was she who virtually settled, after a private talk with Winn, that Lionel might accompany him. The extraordinary thing that Mrs. Drummond said to Winn was, “You see, I feel quite sure that you’ll look after Lionel, whatever happens.”
Winn had replied coldly, “I should never dream of taking a man who couldn’t look after himself.”