"If they were down at the corners during dinner, they had good reason to be," she replied. "I am not going to do what you feared, but I am going to do something else you won't like."
"You are always doing things I don't like. You are at once my worry and my blessing. I don't like your going out so late in the evening to visit the slums; don't like your having those old women from the workhouse to tea once a week; I don't like your—"
"Don't go on, father. You know you do like me to visit the slums, and you do like the old women to come to tea. And perhaps, father, we might arrange for them to come in my absence. Marshall, my maid, knows them almost as well as I do; and on their day out from the workhouse they have nowhere to go, poor darlings, and they do so love their cup of tea and their chat with me, and to sit in a warm room and look at a bright fire."
Katherine paused abruptly; in the midst of her glowing picture she caught sight of her father's face.
"In your absence!" he said—"your absence! What does this mean?"
Katherine paused for a moment. Hunt jumped to his feet.
"I tell you," he said, "you are not to beat about the bush. You have got something at the back of your head. Out with it!"
"I have a very big thing," answered the girl—"the biggest thing in all my life; and there's no going back on it, father. There's no changing my mind. It's got to be done, and I am not prepared with any special reasons. You've got to bear it, daddy."
"What in all the world have I got to bear?"
"I am going out to South Africa, father, as special war correspondent to The Snowball."