“Cheer up! You are an only child. Your father loves you. In the end he will climb down, but the fences are there, and you are still on the wrong side of them.”
“I dare say you would dash at ’em.”
“I am I. I’ve ridden for a fall before now, and had it. You are you. A fall over these particular fences might be disastrous. Go canny! Creep! Crane! That is my advice.”
“I feel that way myself, although I hate creeping and craning. Did father say anything to you about Johnnie Fordingbridge?”
“You mean the man who tootled the tandem horn?”
“Yes. He married his agent’s daughter. He was going fast to the bowwows before I went to India. I never saw such a change in a fellow—never.”
“Sir Geoffrey did say something. What was it? Oh, yes. He pointed him out as a man who had paid a preposterous price for twins.”
“I wonder what father would be willing to pay for another son?”
“Or a grandson,” murmured Margot.
She was very nice and sympathetic after this, the more so, perhaps, as unconsciously he made plain his position—that of dependence on his father. Margot smiled when he prattled of living on his pay in another regiment. And yet the boy’s unworldliness, his faith in true love and hard work (which he knew so little about), caught oddly in her heart. She knew that she had been right in one thing, her “flair” had not failed her—he sat upright in his saddle, a gallant gentleman, a credit to his Order.