"Oh, yes," said the girl. "That's Rush. Every one knows him. I believe he has been in prison for poaching."
"Well, it seems to be his business in life now to delude unhappy mariners; a regular siren luring them to their doom. We asked him to direct us to a camping-place. At first he protested there was no suitable spot, but his malignant spirit prompted him to tell us of a glade where the sward was like velvet, under a charming canopy of umbrageous foliage. We had just got our tent up, and I was boiling the kettle for tea, when there broke upon our solitude a man and a dog--detestable, unnatural creatures both; the dog hadn't a bark in him--it was all transferred to the man. The old buffer barked and bellowed and bullied and brow-beat and bundled us off."
A ripple of laughter from the girl's lips brought Pratt up short. He looked at her reproachfully.
"Do forgive me," she said, "but do you know, I'm sure that--old buffer--was my father!"
Even the ebullient Pratt was rendered speechless; as Armstrong afterwards put it, in boxing parlance, "he was fairly fibbed in the wind."
"Father is a little hasty, but quite a dear, really," the girl continued. "He has been frightfully annoyed by trespassers--that man Rush, for one, and some of Mr. Pratt's servants. But don't you think perhaps we had better say no more about our relations?"
"Certainly," said Armstrong, with a solemn air of conviction. It was the first word he had spoken, and the girl gave him a quick, amused glance.
"Umpire gives us both out!" remarked Pratt, his equanimity quite restored. "We are now back in the status quo, Miss Crawshay, with this difference: that we know each other's name. The Bard of Avon wouldn't have asked 'What's in a name?' if he had been here five minutes ago. If you had known my name, and I had known that you were the daughter of----"
"That's forbidden ground, Mr. Pratt."
"Well, is there any ground that isn't forbidden?" Pratt rejoined. "For our camp, I mean?"