“That might be all right for you,” said Gault.
“But it wouldn’t do the girl much good to be having her name bandied round as one of your girls.”
“There you are,” said Steve, with an angry oath. “You’re as bad as the rest. I mustn’t speak to a girl, because it’ll smirch her reputation. To blazes with her. I don’t care if I never see her.” He put his hand on Gault’s knee as they rode side by side. “Look here, old mate, you know me, and you know if she’s a pretty girl and a smart girl, and all that, I’m bound to get making the pace with her and making violent love to her, just for the fun of it. I can’t help it somehow. So if this thing is going to be the dash nuisance it threatens to be, I’m going to get my cheque and clear out. Would you come with me again?”
“I’ll come with you, Steve,” said Gault. “But wait till you’ve seen her before you say anything.”
Steve threw back his head and laughed out. “Sounds funny, doesn’t it, Aleck, lad? Fly-by-Night running away from a girl he’s never seen. There’s some men I know—and girls too, for that matter—would think that something of a joke. But things might be worse, old owl. Here’s a bright summer morn, as the songs say, we’ve a good meal inside us, good horses below us, and a long day before us. So blow the girl, old son. Though I’m getting most fierce curious about her, and that’s a bad sign, isn’t it?”
Which was something very near what Ess had said to her uncle about him, if you remember.
CHAPTER IV.
When they did meet, the encounter was not in the least like what Ess Lincoln had expected, and more or less planned with herself. She had made up her mind that Steve Knight had probably been completely spoiled by the women he had met. He was evidently a handsome man by all accounts, and had an all-conquering way with women, and would take it as a matter of course that she should add her share to the usual feminine admiration. No girl likes to think she is held cheaply, and Ess was determined she should not be. Besides which she was a good girl, as the expression has it, and took it to be her duty to be casual and distant to any man with the reputation she had heard this man bore.
Consequently, when she was standing talking to her uncle at the door next morning, and he called Steve Knight over to them, saying “I’ll just introduce ye to Steve, Ess,” she waited the meeting with a quietly reserved air, and an odd unaccountable little flutter of her pulse. But, to her surprise, he made no endeavour to impress her, or be particularly nice. In fact, on going over the interview to herself afterwards, she had to admit that he had been very much the reverse. He had merely taken her hand in a perfunctory grasp, quietly said “Pleased to meet you, Miss Lincoln, nice morning,” and then turning to Scottie had remarked that the men were ready and would they be going on. “Just gie them five minutes,” said Scottie, and Steve raising his hat said he would tell them so, asked Ess to excuse him, and walked briskly off.