That was one of the points that made their early morning walks so satisfactory—that there was never any "jawing." John Lester encouraged his boy to tell him each little detail of his life at school. He learned all about his friends—Teddy Raine, the captain of the junior eleven, who was easily the leader of the lower school; Bottles, fat and cheery and honest, whom everybody liked; Nugent, the homeless boy, with a father in India and no mother; these were the chief, but there were a host of others. Mr. Lester knew them all fairly well now. He learned about their scrapes and their pranks, their midnight suppers, half-holiday escapades, and—not in such details—their schoolroom life. Dick was a little shy of talking at first; but, finding only ready sympathy and interest, his tongue became loosened, and he chattered away as freely as he would to the irrepressible Teddy Raine. Mr. Lester never preached. His eye generally held a twinkle; his sharpest criticism was, once or twice, "I don't know that that's altogether the thing." There the matter ended, for him; but Dick made up his mind that the incidents in question should not happen again.
They would come back to breakfast; glowing and hungry, and make a raid on Mrs. Lester in her room, declaring that she was the laziest person alive, and did not know how much she missed; at which Mrs. Lester smiled quietly, and would go down to breakfast arm in arm between them. Not for worlds would she have made a third—even a beloved third—in those walks. Dick had lived in her pocket long enough; it was his turn for his father now, and she rejoiced in each day's new evidence of how completely they were becoming mates.
They visited the great limestone caverns at Yallingup, making a three days' expedition of it, and coming back to Perth full of the weird charm of the glistening underground world. At the hotel they found a two-days' old telegram from Mr. Warner.
"Can you start Thursday obliged to take car Westown with sick governess like meet you same trip don't worry if inconvenient can arrange anything suit you had good trip up."
Mr. Lester glanced at the date.
"H'm; and Thursday is to-morrow. The train starts at five o'clock."
"In the morning?" gasped Mrs. Lester.
"Oh, no—don't be anxious!" He laughed at her. "Five in the afternoon; and we get to Kalgoorlie at ten next morning."
"And after that?"
"After that a little train that wobbles north to Westown at its own sweet will, I suppose," said her husband. "I don't know anything about it; but it's believed to put us off at Westown some time in the afternoon, and Warner will be there with his car. We must go, if possible. I don't want to give him the long journey in from Narrung Downs again."