"There ought to be a statue," said Jimmy Marrable to his cigar, as he leaned back reflectively in his railway carriage, "set up in the capital of every British Colony, representing a female figure in an attitude of aloofness, and inscribed: Erected by a grateful Colony to its Principal Emigration Agent—The Girl at Home Who Married Somebody Else."
Then he sighed to himself—rather forlornly, a woman would have said.
CHAPTER IV
AN UNDERSTUDY
"The indulgence of the audience is asked on behalf of Miss Joan Gaymer, who, owing to the sudden indisposition of Miss Mildred Freshwater, has taken up that lady's part at very short notice."
A couple of hours later Hughie, roaring very gently for so great a lion, was engaged in paddling a Canadian canoe down to Ditton Corner.
The canoe contained one passenger, who, with feminine indifference to the inflexible laws of science, was endeavouring to assist its progress by paddling in the wrong direction. Her small person, propped by convenient cushions, was wedged into the bow of the vessel, and her white frock and attenuated black legs were protected from the results of her own efforts at navigation by a spare blazer of Hughie's. Her hat lay on the floor of the canoe, half-full of cherries, and her long hair rippled and glimmered in the afternoon sun. Miss Joan Gaymer would be a beauty some day, but for the present all knowledge of that fact was being tactfully withheld from her. To do her justice, the prospect would have interested her but little. Like most small girls of eleven, she desired nothing so much at present as to resemble a small boy as closely as possible. She would rather have captured one bird's-nest than twenty hearts, and appearances she counted as dross provided she could hold her own in a catherine-wheel competition.
They were rather a silent couple. Joan was filled with that contentment which is beyond words. She was wearing a new frock; she had escaped under an escort almost exclusively male—if we except the benevolent despotism of Mrs. Ames—from home, nurse, and governess, to attend a series of purely grown-up functions; and to crown all, she was alone in the canoe, a light-blue blazer spread over her knees, with one who represented to her small experience the head and summit of all that a man should—nay, could—be.