"By positive deduction."
"And do I behold Patrick?"
"As one looks upon a beast of burden."
"Oh!"
Miss Middleton's exclamation was louder than the matter of the dialogue seemed to require. She caught her hands up.
In the line of the outer extremity of the rhododendron, screened from the house windows, young Crossjay lay at his length, with his head resting on a doubled arm, and his ivy-wreathed hat on his cheek, just where she had left him, commanding him to stay. Half-way toward him up the lawn, she saw the poor boy, and the spur of that pitiful sight set her gliding swiftly. Colonel De Craye followed, pulling an end of his moustache.
Crossjay jumped to his feet.
"My dear, dear Crossjay!" she addressed him and reproached him. "And how hungry you must be! And you must be drenched! This is really too had."
"You told me to wait here," said Crossjay, in shy self-defence.
"I did, and you should not have done it, foolish boy! I told him to wait for me here before luncheon, Colonel De Craye, and the foolish, foolish boy!—he has had nothing to eat, and he must have been wet through two or three times:—because I did not come to him!"