Dick nodded gravely.
'Thanks for your confidence,' said Frank laughing. 'I think you'll find me a fairly good sort as step-fathers go.'
Dick had no fears whatever on that point; he and Frank had been excellent friends for as long as he could remember, and Frank had been his champion in many semi-public disagreements about billy-goats; and besides, he was a reader whose judgment the boy held in the highest respect, and that counted for a great deal.
The boy had a message for Harry, and delivered it with great secrecy at the earliest opportunity.
'She's back at Summers's, Harry,' he whispered. 'She gave Kitty a letter to give to me to give you.'
Harry tore the envelope with trembling impatient hands. It contained only a short note: 'Will you come to me at the gate under the firs to-night at eight?' and was coldly signed, 'Your true friend,
C. S.'
CHAPTER XXIV
HARRY awaited the approach of evening with burning impatience, and his heart was lighter than it had been for weeks. He thought that now the distraction induced by her father's danger, his arrest and his death, and the subsequent trials had departed, he would find her with a clear mind and responsive to his love, and it would be his pride and joy to teach her to forget her troubles and to make her happy. Harry, who up to the time of meeting Chris after his return to Waddy, had been even more unromantic and lacking in poetry than the average bush native, had, under the influence of his passion, evolved a strong vein of both romance and poesy; and the sudden development of this unknown side of his nature induced novel sensations. He thought of his previous self almost as a stranger, for whom he felt some sentiment of pity not untouched with contempt, and even when hope was feeblest he hugged his love and brooded over it secretly with the devotion of a tender girl.
He was at the trysting-place a quarter of an hour before the time appointed, but Christina was already there. Her greeting chilled and subdued him. He went towards her, smiling, elate, with eager arms, calling her name; she put him back with extended hands.