“It happens,” said Bayre, “that I could get a holiday now if I liked, and I might not be able to do so later. If you fellows agree to go I’ll make arrangements as soon as you like. I’ve been getting restless lately. Working with no result is not good enough: dull routine work for one’s bread-and-butter and nothing more’s not good enough: this beastly old city’s not good enough: life’s not good enough!”
With which drastic comment on things in general and his own affairs in particular, Bayre began to swing up and down the room at a great rate, with his hands in his pockets and his dark eyes gleaming rather savagely from out of his pale face, to which dark hair worn long gave a certain individuality at which Southerley, with his close-cropped, conventional head, and Repton, with what his friends called his sandy stubble, scoffed long and loudly.
Though neither of the other young men chafed as much under the conditions of existence as Bayre did, the suggestion of a change, of a possibly romantic adventure with a sort of object, seized both of them.
And the end of it was that, without wasting much time in discussion, they all made arrangements for a journey together to the Channel Islands, to hunt out in company this mysterious rich bachelor uncle of Bayre’s in whose existence, perhaps, two of the party scarcely believed at all.
CHAPTER II.
THEY FIND THE GIRL
It was on a Saturday, at 9.15 in the evening, that the three travellers started from Paddington on their search for adventures and Bayre’s rich uncle.
It was very cold, and there was an ill-concealed sentiment abroad that they had chosen a time of year for their expedition which, though distinctly favourable to their chances of having the train, the boat and the islands a good deal to themselves, was not so well chosen as regarded their own comfort and enjoyment.
It was chilly work, as Repton observed, turning out of the train at Weymouth between two and three o’clock in the morning; and when they arrived at Guernsey, after a long and rough sea passage, in the gloom of a November morning, all three travellers were inclined to think that the mildness of the climate had been exaggerated, and to wonder what on earth they had left dear, dirty dark London for at such an unseasonable time.
They had heard, through some acquaintance, before leaving town, of a quiet little lodging-house kept by a Frenchwoman, where they had made up their minds to stay, in pursuance of their determination to follow the usual tourist plans as little as possible.
Their decision involved a rather long walk through streets which looked, in the circumstances, gloomy, grimy and mean; and when at last they arrived at Madame Nicolas’ modest establishment, not having taken the precaution to write and inform her of their coming, they found the place in a decidedly out-of-season condition.