“Oh, that’s all right, Daddy. He is only an abstraction to me. But somehow he interests me. Don’t you be worrying about me. I promise you solemnly that I will tell you everything I hear about him. Then you can gauge my feelings, and keep tab of my folly.”
“All right; little girl! There can’t be anything very dangerous when you tell your father all about it.”
It was three months before Joy mentioned the name of Lord Athlyne again to her father. One morning she came to him as he sat smoking in the garden at Air. Her eyes were glistening, and she walked slowly and dejectedly. In her hand she held a copy of the New York Tribune. She held it out, pointing with her finger to a passage.
“Read it for me, little girl!” In answer she said with a break in her voice:
“You read it, Daddy. Don’t make me. It hurts me; and I should only break down. It is only a dream I know; but it is a sad dream and is over all too soon!” Colonel Ogilvie read the passage which was an account of the fighting at Durk River in which numbers of the British were carried away by the rapid stream, the hale and those wounded by the terrible fire of the Boers alike. The list of the missing was headed by a name he knew.
“Major the Earl of Athlyne, of the Irish Hussars.”
The old gentleman rose up as stiff as at the salute and raised his hat reverently as he said:
“A very gallant gentleman. My heart is with you, my little girl! A dream it may have been; but a sad ending to any dream!”
A week after Joy sought her father again, in the garden. This time her step was buoyant, her face radiant, and her eyes bright. The moment her father saw he felt that it had something to do with what he called in his own mind “that infernal fellow.” When she was close to him she said in a low voice that thrilled:
“He is not dead, Daddy! He was wounded and carried down the river and was captured by the Boers and taken up to Pretoria. They have put him in the Birdcage. Beasts! It’s all here in the Tribune.”