Tom Bodger shut one eye, gave the lad a frown and a knowing look, and then away he went up a rugged staircase-like pathway to the top of the cliff, looking every moment, while Aleck watched, as if he would slip off, but never slipping once, and finally turning at the top to take off and wave his hat, and then he was gone.
Chapter Five.
“Oh, dear!” groaned Aleck. “How am I to face him?” and he went on till only a few steps divided him from the cultivated garden, where he stopped again. “I wonder where he is. In the study, I suppose—write, write, write, at that great history. Can’t I leave it and get into my room with a bad headache? It’s only true. It aches horribly. I’ll send word by Jane that I’m too poorly to come down. Bah!” muttered the boy. “What nonsense; he’d come up to me directly with something for me to take. I wonder whether he is in his room or out in the garden. He mustn’t see me till I’ve been up into my room and done something to my hair. Perhaps he’s in the summer-house and I can get in and upstairs without his seeing me. Oh, if I only—”
“Hullo! Aleck, lad, what are you doing there? Why are you so late? Dinner has been ready quite an hour.”
The captain had suddenly appeared from behind a great clump of waving tamarisk, and stood looking down at the lad.
“I was coming to see if you were in sight, and—why, what in the name of wonder is the matter with you? Where have you been? Why, by all that’s wonderful, you’ve been fighting!”
“Yes, uncle,” said the lad, with a gasp of relief, for it seemed to him as if, instead of taking the bold plunge, swimming fashion, he had been suddenly dragged in.
“I thought so,” cried the captain, angrily. “Here—no, stop; come up to the house, to my room. We can’t talk here.”