"So you not only cheated a popular journal—a nice thing to do!—but deceived the British public, which is a far more serious matter. What explanation have you to offer? What apology to 'One who was Deceived'—as I shall sign my 'Times' letter, when I write it?"
"Alice, you are an inquisitor," said Colonel Bristo. But Alice replied with such a mischievous, interested smile that Dick immediately ceased to feel ashamed of himself.
"The fact is," he owned, "your popular journal doesn't care a fig whether one has been to a place so long as one's sketches of it are attractive. I did them a thing once of a bullock-dray stuck up in the mud; and how did it appear? 'The War at the Cape: Difficulties in Reaching the Front.' And they had altered the horns of my bullocks, if you please, to make 'em into South African cattle! You see, just then Africa was of more interest to your British public than Australia. Surely you won't be so hard on me now? You see you have made me divulge professional secrets by your calumnies."
Alice said she forgave him, if all that was true; but she added, slyly: "One must take travellers' tales with a pinch of salt, you know!"
"Come, Alice," said her father, "if you insist on pitching into our artist, he shall have his fling at our photographer. Dick, she's taken to photography—it's lately become the fashion. Look on that table, under the lamp; you'll find some there that she was trimming, or something, when you dropped in our midst."
"May I look at them?" Dick asked, moving over to Alice.
"Certainly; but they're very bad, I'm afraid; and since you artists scorn photography—as so inartistic, you know—I suppose you will be a severe critic."
"Not when this is the subject," said Dick, in a low voice, picking up a print; "how did you manage to take yourself?"
He was sitting beside her at the little table, with the lamp between them and the Colonel; he instinctively lowered his voice, and a grain of the feeling he had so far successfully repressed escaped into his tone.
"Someone took off the cap for me."