“About you,” he assented.
“What has she been saying?”
“Well, nothing definite,” Captain Vandermere answered, “but of course you know she’s an awful good pal of mine, and she did write me a line or two about you. It seems there’s some young fellow been about down here whom she isn’t very stuck on, and she seemed to be afraid——”
“Well, go on,” Lois said calmly.
“Well, that he was making the running with you a bit,” Captain Vandermere declared, feeling that he was getting into rather deeper waters. “Of course, I don’t know anything about him, and I don’t want to say anything against anybody who is a friend of yours, but from all that I have heard he didn’t seem to me to be the sort of man I fancied for my little friend Lois to get—well, fond of.”
“So you decided to come down yourself,” Lois continued.
“I decided to come down and say something which I ought to have said some time ago,” Captain Vandermere continued, “only you see you are really only a child, and you’ve got a lot more money than I have, and you are not of age yet, so I thought I’d let it be for a bit. But you know I’m fond of you, Lois.”
“Are you?” she asked, artlessly.
“You must know that,” he continued, bending over her. “I wonder——”
“Are you aware that we are standing on the top of a hill,” Lois said, “and that everybody for a good many miles round has a perfectly clear view of us?”