“No, I don’t. You know that, I am sure. But what is the use of your stopping here? There is nothing for you to do, and I feel that you are wasting your time and that you hate it. Tell the truth. Don’t you long to be back at Monksland, working at that aerophone?”
“I should be glad to get on with my experiments, but I don’t like leaving you,” he answered.
“But you had better leave me for a while. It is not comfortable for you idling here, particularly when your father is in this uncertain temper. If all be well, in another couple of months or so we shall come together for good, and be able to make our own arrangements, according to circumstances. Till then, if I were you, I should go home, especially as I find that I can get on with my uncle much better when you are not here.”
“Then what is to happen after we marry, and I can’t be sent away?”
“Who knows? But if we are not comfortable at Monk’s Abbey, we can always set up for ourselves—with Dad at Seaview, for instance. He’s peaceable enough; besides, he must be looked after; and, to be frank, my uncle hectors him, poor dear.”
“I will think it over,” said Morris. “And now come for a walk on the beach, and we will forget all these worries.”
Next morning the Colonel appeared at breakfast in a perfectly angelic frame of mind, having to all appearance utterly forgotten the “contretemps” of the previous afternoon. Perhaps this was policy, or perhaps the fact of his having won several hundred pounds the night before mollified his mood. At least it had become genial, and he proved a most excellent companion.
“Look here, old fellow,” he said to Morris, throwing him a letter across the table; “if you have nothing to do for a week or so, I wish you would save an aged parent a journey and settle up this job with Simpkins.”
Morris read the letter. It had to do with the complete reerection of a set of buildings on the Abbey farm, and the putting up of a certain drainage mill. Over this question differences had arisen between the agent Simpkins and the rural authorities, who alleged that the said mill would interfere with an established right of way. Indeed, things had come to such a point that if a lawsuit was to be avoided the presence of a principal was necessary.
“Simpkins is a quarrelsome ass,” explained the Colonel, “and somebody will have to smooth those fellows down. Will you go? because if you won’t I must, and I don’t want to break into the first pleasant holiday I have had for five years—thanks to your kindness, my dear John.”