“Very well,” he said, remembering his daughter’s painful experiences of the last days, “I’ll be back in a moment, Otto. I want to ask you about that mission station you were telling me of.”
Otto seated himself near to the lady.
“Miss Rovers, I hear,” said Otto, “has safely returned.”
The lady bowed over her flowers.
“She came back earlier than she had intended,” continued the Jonker. “I suppose that she felt being away from what is doubtless a most happy home.”
“I try to make it happy,” murmured Miss Mopius.
“Could you do otherwise?” said Otto, fervently. And he added, in a tone that was almost sad, “It seems cruel to disturb your trefoil even for a day.”
And he looked at her meditatively.
Miss Mopius gasped for breath. She muttered something about “leaving and cleaving.”
Otto stared at her.