The morning was drawing on and it was getting late--that is, for the tropics--namely, it was near nine o'clock, and soon the sun would be high in the heavens, so that it was not likely along the dusty white road from Belize any sign of human life would make it appearance until sunset was close at hand.
"If Mr. Spranger doesn't come pretty soon," Julian said consequently to himself, "he won't come at all, and has, probably, important business to attend to in the city. Wherefore I shall have to pass to-day alone here, or have a sunstroke before I can get as far back as All Pines for a meal. I ought to have brought some lunch with me."
"Halloa, my friend," he remarked a moment later to the mustang, which had commenced to utter little whinnies, and seemed to be regarding him with rather a piteous sort of look, "what's the matter with you? You don't want to start back and get a sunstroke, do you? Oh! I know. Of course!" and he rose from his seat and, going further into the bushes behind the knoll, began to use both his eyes and his ears. For it had not taken him a moment to divine--he who had been round the world three times! that the creature required that which in all tropical lands is wanted by man and animal more than anything else--namely, the wherewithal to quench their thirst.
Presently, he heard the grateful sound of trickling water, which in British Honduras is bountifully supplied by Providence, and discovered a swift-flowing rivulet on its way to the sea below--it being, in fact, a little tributary of Mullin's River--when, going back for the creature, he led it to where the water was, while, tying its bridle to some reeds, he left it there to quench its thirst. After which he returned to the summit of the knoll to continue his lookout along the road from Belize.
But now he saw that, during his slight absence, some signs of other riders had appeared, there being at this present moment two black-and-white blurs upon the white dusty thread. Two that progressed side by side, and presented a duplicate, party-coloured imitation of that which, earlier, Sebastian Ritherdon and his steed had offered to his view.
"If that's Mr. Spranger," Julian thought to himself, "he has brought a companion with him, or has picked up a fellow traveller. By Jove though! one's a darkey and, well! I declare, the other's a woman. Oh!" he exclaimed suddenly, joyfully too; "it's Miss Spranger. Here's luck!" and with that, regardless of the sun's rays and all the calamities that those rays can bring in such a land, he jumped into the road and began waving his handkerchief violently.
The signal, he saw, was returned at once; from beneath the huge green umbrella held over the young lady's head--and his own--by the negro accompanying her, he observed an answering handkerchief waved, and then the mass of white material which formed a veil thrown back, as though she was desirous that he who was regarding her should not be in any doubt as to who was approaching. Yet, she need not have been thus desirous. There is generally one form (as the writer has been told by those who know) which, when we are young, or sometimes even, no longer boys and girls, we recognise easily enough, no matter how much it may be disguised by veils or dust-coats or other similar impediments to our sight.
Naturally, Beatrix and her sable companion rode slowly--to ride fast here on such a morning means death, or something like it--but they reached the knoll at last, and then, after mutual greetings had been exchanged and Julian had lifted Miss Spranger off her horse--one may suppose how tenderly!--she said:
"Father was sorry, but he could not come. So I came instead. I hope you don't mind."
"Mind!" he said, while all the time he was thinking how pretty she looked in her white dress, and how fascinating the line which marked the distinction between the sunburn of her face and the whiteness of her throat made her appear--"mind!" Then, words seeming somehow to fail him (who rarely was at a loss for such things, either for the purpose of jest or earnest) at this moment, he contented himself with a glance only, and in preparing for her a suitable seat in the shade. Yet, all the same, he was impelled directly afterwards to tell her again and again how much he felt her goodness in coming at all.