Ted threw his head back and shouted with laughter, exclaiming, “That’s the best of all, and I quite agree with you!” Then they ran up against the landing-stage, and he hurried her out of the boat and along the road to his aunt’s as fast as she would go.
“My dear child!” was all Mrs Masterman said, when she saw her, and without another word bustled her off upstairs, and flew to prepare a hot bath.
“It’s nothing new,” she explained in answer to Ted’s queries later, shaking her head drolly. “She’s just the wildest harum-scarum that ever breathed, and her father positively delights in it. I must take you to call. He’ll laugh himself nearly ill over this escapade, but for my part, I think he would do better returning thanks for the multitudinous times she has been given back to him, from the very gates of death.”
“But she wouldn’t have been drowned to-day, aunt. She could have swum ashore.”
“She might have had cramp, or caught her death of cold, or a hundred other things. It’s dreadful, to my thinking, for a girl to be so absolutely a boy in everything. But there! she’s young yet, and I daresay she’ll improve by and by.”
Ted, standing at the window with his hands in his pockets, staring across the Loch, had an odd, inward conviction that there was no room for improvement, but this he kept to himself, asking instead of her father and home.
A little later, he made their acquaintance, as his aunt decided to keep Paddy all night, and sent him to The Ghan House with a note of explanation. Jack and Eileen were just returning from the Parsonage as he arrived, and while Mrs Adair read the note aloud to the General, out on the lawn where they were sitting, the two young people sauntered up.
“Lord love us!” exclaimed the General gleefully; “was there ever such a girl before! Capsized, did she?—right out by Greenore!—managing the boat alone, too!—and out there a day like this—by my faith a good-plucked one! Here, Jack! you young scoundrel! why weren’t you out with Paddy this afternoon? Here she’s been getting capsized right out by Greenore and fished out of the water by this young man, while you were wasting cartridges trying to hit snipe.
“Here’s my hand, sir,” turning to Ted and giving him a hearty hand-shake, “and an old soldier’s thanks and blessing, and if there’s anything I can do for you at any time just name it. Lord! what a girl she is!” he finished, and held his sides and shook with laughter.
Meanwhile Mrs Adair added her thanks in a low, eager voice, asking anxiously after Paddy’s welfare; and Jack took stock of the stranger generally.