She had gathered the child up into her arms, and under the influence of her jocund mood Christian smiled cheerfully. “You are very wonderful as a mother,” he assured her, and extended a tentative finger toward Chrissy, who, huddled in awkward and twisted discomfort under her mother’s elbow, regarded him with unconcealed repulsion.
“She seems an extremely healthy child,” he remarked, and the words were not so perfunctory as they sounded. The robust, red cheeked heartiness of Chrissy raised musing reflections in his mind. If this infant, with its stout mottled arms and legs, had been a boy, it would be at this moment his heir. No one could ask for a finer child—and she was very closely akin to him. And Cora was her mother—and Cora’s sister!
“Oh, but where are we going to live?” she broke in upon his meditations. “I said to Eddy that I’d lay odds you were thinking of David’s Court for us. You know the kennels used to be there before Porlock’s time.”
“All that we can arrange,” said Christian, shaking off his reverie, and lifting his hat. “Rest easy in your mind about everything.”
She nodded with an expansive geniality which freely included Dicky as well, and then walked away. It slowly occurred to Christian that she had said nothing about her sister’s presence in the neighborhood, although it was impossible to suppose her ignorant, of it. Upon consideration, he decided that her reticence was delicate. He felt that he liked Cora, and then uneasily speculated upon the seeming probability that his liking for her was in excess of her sister’s.
“Westland,” he said, with a new thought in his busy brain, “you know about geography—about where the different British colonies are on the map, and what they are distinguished for. I want to know of a good place, a very long way off, where two young men with a moderate capital might do well, or-at least have the chance to do well.”
“Fellows like that generally go to South Africa, nowadays,” replied Dicky, “though I believe it’s gone off a bit. It’s not as far away as Australia, but it’s livelier, apparently. They don’t seem to come back as much.”
“No; I have a prejudice against that Johannesburg. It is not a good atmosphere, and it is too easy to get into trouble there.”
“There are great reports about British Columbia just now. They’ve found wonderful new gold-fields, and they’re a fearful distance from anywhere. It takes you months to get to them, so I’m told. But it depends so much on what the fellows themselves are like. If I may ask, do I know them?”
“It is Augustine Torr that I have in mind, and a young friend of his—Bailey his name is. By the way, a brother of the lady we just left.”