“Thank you,” said Donald Ward. “Thank you. You mean well, and I take your words in the spirit you speak them; but when I sit in a boat I like to pull my own weight in her.”
He shoved out his oar as he spoke, and fell into time with the long, steady stroke which Neal set.
Una leaned forward and spoke in a low voice to Neal, timing her words so that they reached him as he bent forward at the beginning of each stroke.
“Is’nt it curious, Neal, that Maurice and I are going back to welcome an aunt whom we have never seen, and that you are taking an unknown uncle home with you?”
Then, after a pause, she spoke again.
“It’s like a kind of fate, Neal, one of the things which happen to people, and alter all their lives, and they can’t do anything to help themselves. I wonder will we ever have good times together again, now that this aunt of mine and this uncle of yours have come?”
“Why shouldn’t we?” said Neal.
“Oh, I don’t know. But your uncle seems to be one of the people who make a great clatter about liberty and equality and the rights of man. And you know Aunt Estelle belonged to the old aristocracy in France. They wanted to guillotine her in the Terror. I don’t think she will love Republicans.”
“I suppose not,” said Neal, gravely.
“But that won’t prevent our being friends, Neal?”