Larrupper agreed; but the next instant, catching sight of two figures above in the field, and with a dim remembrance of a café conversation floating through his mind, made his first effort at diplomacy.
“Oh, but I’m forgettin’ I’ve to see old Brathay!” he announced, bending to gaze at a perfectly satisfactory lubricator. “If you don’t mind, I’ll just drive right up an’ give him a hail. I want to ask him about some—you know—what-d’you-call-em—what’s-its-names!”
Deb hesitated, looking at him suspiciously.
“Oh, of course—if you want to go——!” she began reluctantly, a little puzzled. “But I can see hounds are all out, and you know Brathay always has a fit if there’s a motor within a mile of the pack. I know! I’ll wait here with the car while you run up to the kennels; and you can take the puppy with you.”
“Not much!” Larry refused flatly. “I wouldn’t touch the thing with a ten-foot pole. I’m simply a yawnin’ death-trap for dogs—it would never reach its cubby-hole alive. An’ if you think I’m goin’ to leave you waitin’ in the mud like a beastly chauffeur—how do, Laker, old man! Where have you been puttin’ yourself all the week?”
“Rather neat groupin’!” he congratulated himself, leaning anxiously over a sound and blameless wheel, while Deb swung round with the puppy in her arms, to meet Christian’s pleasant smile and a grave bow from the stranger beside him.
“One of the puppies”—she explained hurriedly and incoherently, put out by the sudden encounter, though unaware of Larrupper’s machinations. “Wandering about the village—cheese—had Brathay missed it? Yes, it looked a good one—and such jolly things they were, too, weren’t they?—oh, only too glad, of course—anybody would—and it was more than time that she was getting back.”
“But I want to show you our improvements,” Christian protested, taking the hound from her, and introducing his companion. “Mr. Callander—Miss Lyndesay—my cousin, Larrup—I say, Lionel, what on earth do you call yourself? Mr. Callander’s frightfully pleased with the kennels, I do want you to look round and give everything your blessing—please!”
“Tell your father what’s doin’, an’ all that kind of thing,” Larry supplemented, with amazing readiness, and again clapped himself on the back, for she yielded at once. She never denied her father information concerning the least detail of the estate.
She walked up the field between the two men, puzzling out a means of escape, and listening vaguely to Christian’s thanks for her salving of the puppy, while Larry followed with the car, hooting furiously at inquisitive noses and waving sterns. Her last visit to the kennels had been made with her father and Stanley—the conversation including “points” on the one side, and “The Merry Widow” on the other. She had wondered why hounds had met Stanley with distant recognition while greeting her father with effusive joy; and she had wondered, moreover—but what was the use of wondering, now?