"A Delilah, Cousin Sylvia," said Mr. Halliday.
"You'd be the better for having your hair cut, Cousin David. I shouldn't allude to such a personal matter if I didn't hope that Mrs. Gillespie would back me up. I've done my best to improve you, and failed; perhaps public opinion will do some good."
"Don't worry, Mrs. Burtenshaw," said Mr. Gillespie. "He'll get a thorough crop before he goes up country, where barbers are unknown."
"But it won't matter then, where there's no one to see him.... It was plain John thought his father would marry me----"
"The other way about, cousin," Mr. Halliday interposed. "He wouldn't suspect me of all men of fortune hunting."
"Listen to him!" exclaimed Mrs. Burtenshaw, drawing herself up with an affectation of injured dignity. "If any man wanted to marry me it could only be for my money, you see. As I was saying, John quite expects to be presented with a step-mother, and resents it, like all young things. Joe there wouldn't speak to me for a week when I married poor Burtenshaw. It's a nice kind of jealousy, don't you think so, Mrs. Gillespie?"
"Just like a dog's," said Mrs. Gillespie, in a tone that made every one laugh. "When we first came out we had a collie that couldn't see my husband put his arm round me without whining to be petted."
"John will be flabbergasted when he sees us," said the older of the two young men, referred to by his mother as Joe.
"Yes, wasn't it funny that he should come across them in the wilds of Africa, and rescue Poll from a game-pit without either of them knowing they were cousins?" said Helen, his sister. "It's quite a romance."
"Doesn't he know the relationship now?" asked Mrs. Gillespie.